On 2016-04-15 21:57 +0200, Bill Allombert wrote: > Package: debhelper > Version: 9.20160403 > Severity: important > > Hello debhelper maintainers, > > There is a circular dependency between debhelper, dh-autoreconf and > dh-strip-nondeterminism: > > debhelper :Depends: dh-strip-nondeterminism, dh-autoreconf (>= 12~) > dh-autoreconf :Depends: debhelper > dh-strip-nondeterminism :Depends: debhelper > > Circular dependencies are known to cause problems during upgrade, so we > should try to avoid them.
The severity of this bug has been downgraded to minor by the maintainer, which seems fair as the circular dependencies are unlikely to actually cause problems. Nevertheless, perhaps it is a good idea to split the debhelper perl modules off to a libdebhelper-perl package. Then addons like dh-autoreconf and dh-strip-nondeterminism can depend on libdebhelper-perl rather than debhelper. This does not only break the circular dependency, but also gives a better idea which packages that currently depend on debhelper need the commands and which need the perl modules. After all, some day debhelper might be rewritten in Python. ;-) I have created a branch for the package split on salsa[1], assuming that 12.6 would the version where the split occurs. If the debhelper maintainer thinks this is a good idea, I can send a merge request. Otherwise, tagging the bug as wontfix looks reasonable. Cheers, Sven 1. https://salsa.debian.org/joachim-guest/debhelper/tree/libdebhelper-perl