[pkg-gnupg-maint] [Pkg-matrix-maintainers] dh-builtusing planned change affects condor gnupg2 matrix-synapse

[Antonio Russo]

On 2025-11-24 08:57, Nicolas Boulenguez wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I intend to change the dh-builtusing debhelper plugin in a way that
> would affect the 3 packages in the subject.
> 
> A pattern like ${dh-builtusing:librust-*-dev} in the control file is
> first searched in Build-Depends fields (generating a relation per
> match).  If no match is found, all installed packages are searched.
> 
> As said in the manual page, this fallback trick was intended for
> debhelper plugin authors.  Time has passed, no plugin author seems
> interested, and this fallbacks affects build reproducibility.

<snip>

> Can 'matrix-synapse' add librust-base64-dev, librust-blake2-dev and so
> on to Build-Depends?  Else, could you please describe your needs?

I've made these modifications in [1], and also simplified the
Static-Built-Using stanza by pre-generating it from all real
librust-*-dev packages (I could not use the "S" pattern because
it matched virtual packages and gave me errors).

That said, I don't think I really understand the point of the tag,
and so I'm asking for some guidance as to whether or not my change
adequately solves whatever problem that tag sets out to do.

If what I have here is genuinely accomplishing the task, it may make
sense to add a feature to dh-builtusing so that the "S" pattern
does not match pseudo-packages, and people would not need to
manually generate these lists [2].


Best,
Antonio

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/matrix-team/matrix-synapse/-/merge_requests/29/diffs?commit_id=2e4eb5abf308ab30fdf72400e51b13642d7682ac

[2] Of course, writing this sentence makes me think I'm probably
missing the point.  Hence my request for help.