[Pkg-zsh-devel] Bug#747141 debhelper: dh_installdocs --link-doc forces source-version dependencies (was: Re: Bug#766795: afterstep not binnmu safe and not installable in sid)

[Bernhard R. Link]

* Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org> [141109 17:33]:
> I suspect that's currently the only solution. zsh is affected, too:
> 
> Depends: zsh-common (= 5.0.7-3), zsh-common (= 5.0.7-3+b1), [...]
> 
> debian/control says:
> 
> Depends: zsh-common (= ${source:Version}),
>          ${misc:Depends},
> 	 [...]
> 
> So it may be worth reinvestigating this issue instead of removing
> ${misc:Depends} from tons of packages (and causing lintian warnings
> about that) and requesting freeze exceptions for all these uploads. (I
> expected hundreds of them, zsh and afterstep only being some
> examples.)
> 
> Any advice by the release team on this issue is appreciated.


The problem is that removing the misc:Depends just replaces one bug with
another one: The packages created that way will not include a changelog
for the binnmu.

Packages using --link-doc to link from an architecture any[1] to an
architecture all package are not really bin-nmuable. So the only
possiblities I see are:

- keep the way it is which causes those packages generate uninstallable
  packages if binnmu'd [2]
- remove the dependencies (in the packages or debhelper), causing
  binnmu'd packages to have no changelog of the binnmu.
- try to add some bin-nmu and affectedness detection (with the danger of
  false positives) to debhelper to make thsoe packages fail to build
  if binnmu'd so that no uninstallable packages are generated.
- change the affected packages in question to not use --link-doc.

	Bernhard R. Link

[1] Or rather anything but "all".
[2] What is the status if multi-arch and bin-nmu, does being bin-nmu'd
    still break multi-arch packages?

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