[pkg-apparmor] Bug#984582: apparmor FTCBFS: many different reasons

[Helmut Grohne]

Control: tags -1 + patch

intrigeri asked me to split this into merge requests and update the bug.

On Fri, Mar 05, 2021 at 01:07:45PM +0100, Helmut Grohne wrote:
> 1. Build-Depends are a problem. perl is not installable for the host
>    architecture. perl is used here to build a perl extension. As such it
>    should instead depend on perl-xs-dev (which currently is a virtual
>    package). We're in the process of transitioning all perl extensions
>    to this dependency and apparmor is till missing. Simple, right?

Since the perl bindings are gone, what is left is dropping the perl
dependency (as perl-base is essential):

https://salsa.debian.org/apparmor-team/apparmor/-/merge_requests/19

> 2. Build-Depends: python3 is not installable either. The usual way here
>    is to replace python(.*)-dev with libpython\1-dev, python\1-dev:any
>    and annotating the interpreter dependencies :any.

https://salsa.debian.org/apparmor-team/apparmor/-/merge_requests/20

> 3. The PERL_VENDORARCH variable is computed for the build architecture.
>    The snippet is common to many perl extensions and the replacement is
>    not nice. We're in the process of moving this to a more central
>    place, but in the mean time please include the snippet from the
>    attached patch to mae it use the host's perl config.

Obsolete due to perl bindings being removed.

> 4. Then it uses AC_CHECK_FILE to locate a header. Bad idea.
>    AC_CHECK_FILE is for host files, not for build files. Please use test
>    -e instead.

https://gitlab.com/apparmor/apparmor/-/merge_requests/728 is included in
Debian already.

> 5. In the end, I couldn't figure out how to make the perl extension
>    cross buildable. Instead, I offer the addition of a noperl build
>    profile to make any progress here.

Obsolete due to perl bindings being removed.

> 6. The configure script assumes that $PYTHON-config is right.
>    Unfortunately, the Python interpreter is not usually prefixed with a
>    triplet whereas the -config tool is. Thus we get the build
>    architecture python-config here, but we should use the host one.
>    AC_PATH_TOOL is required here.

https://gitlab.com/apparmor/apparmor/-/merge_requests/729 is included in
Debian already.

> 7. It fails linking -lz. This is an issue with python3.9 actually and
>    reported separately as #984580.

Has been fixed in the Python packaging.

However, we have a new issue.

8. The binutils and parser subdirectories are built with plain make and
   thus lack cross tool invocations. The obvious solution is using
   dh_auto_build. Also changehat/mod_apparmor is implicitly built by
   make install and thus affected by the same problem.

   https://salsa.debian.org/apparmor-team/apparmor/-/merge_requests/21

And once you include those three merge requests, cross building apparmor
should just work.

Helmut