Sven Joachim: > 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. >
Indeed; given debhelper does not have and is never expected to have a postinst script, then dpkg can always break the cycle by "configure"'ing debhelper first. > 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 > Those commits are less involved than I had feared, so it might make sense to merge it as long as it does not cause (unfixable) regressions for bootstrapping/cross-building. Please feel free to create a merge request for this. Thanks for having a look at this. :) ~Niels
