Bug#939387: Please provide a way to rebuild the package with debian/changelog-only changes

[Mattia Rizzolo]

On Wed, Sep 04, 2019 at 01:06:50PM +0200, Stéphane Glondu wrote:
> When recompiling all packages that use OCaml with OCaml 4.08.0,
> diffoscope failed with:
> 
> > debian/rules:16: *** Version in debian/changelog does not match diffoscope version.  Stop.
> 
> This is because my scripts generate a new changelog entry documenting
> the recompilation, with a suffixed version, but otherwise does not
> change the source package.


OOI, what kind of suffix do you use?

> I believe this kind of changes-only-in-debian/changelog should be
> supported by all Debian packages.

I disagree with this generalization.

> Maybe you could relax the version
> check so that the version in diffoscope/__init__.py is only a prefix
> of the version in debian/changelog?

So, the check is:
 ifneq ($(DEB_DISTRIBUTION),UNRELEASED)
  ifneq (,$(filter %-backports,$(DEB_DISTRIBUTION)))
    ifeq ($(DEB_VERSION:~bpo10+1=),$(PY_VERSION))
     $(info Building a Debian backport, accepting version mismatch $(PY_VERSION) <-> $(DEB_VERSION))
    else
     $(error Version in debian/changelog does not match diffoscope version or backport policy)
    endif
  else
   $(error Version in debian/changelog does not match diffoscope version)
  endif
 endif
i.e. if you use UNRELEASED you can use whatever version you want to.

I think in the past we did accidentally release with a mismatching
version, and I really don't want it to happen again, so I'm somewhat
worried about relaxing the check to "just allow all suffixes".

That said, it has also been annoying for ubuntu, where every time they
have to to do a change they also have to tweak this check (usually it's
me so it's not that much of a hassle, but I can see other developers
being annoyed at it).

-- 
regards,
                        Mattia Rizzolo

GPG Key: 66AE 2B4A FCCF 3F52 DA18  4D18 4B04 3FCD B944 4540      .''`.
more about me:  https://mapreri.org                             : :'  :
Launchpad user: https://launchpad.net/~mapreri                  `. `'`
Debian QA page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mattia  `-
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