[R-pkg-team] Bug#987714: Depends/Suggests/Recommends are generate from the apt-cache avail list which is unpredictable

[Sjoerd Simons]

Package: dh-r
Severity: normal
Tags: ftbfs

Hey,

For context: we've got a debian derivative distribution that builds using
open-build-system (aka OBS). Unlike the debian buildd the apt cache isn't
available in the builds and if it was made available it would only be for the
set of installed packages (e.g. the build-depends) not the whole distribution.

However I think the underlying issues are more general and apply to Debian as
well. Fundamentally the apt cache list is not deterministic regardless so the
substvars end up being non-determinstic even if the same set of build-depends
are installed in the build environment which is awkward.

However the biggest issue is see is that package not being resolvable end up
being ignored with a warning rather then failing the build, which makes it hard
to detect (unexpected) issues.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.0
  APT prefers unstable-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'proposed-updates'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: armhf, arm64

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-6-amd64 (SMP w/32 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages dh-r depends on:
ii  dctrl-tools              2.24-3+b1
ii  debhelper                13.3.4
ii  libfile-which-perl       1.23-1
ii  libswitch-perl           2.17-2.1
pn  libwww-curl-simple-perl  <none>
pn  r-base-dev               <none>

Versions of packages dh-r recommends:
pn  cme               <none>
ii  devscripts        2.21.1
ii  git-buildpackage  0.9.22

Versions of packages dh-r suggests:
pn  postgresql-client-common  <none>