Package: cdbs Version: 0.4.30 Severity: normal Hi Maintainer,
First of it: Im *not* after getting cdbs to die or something which I already heard from some, it is *this* one mis-feature im against. Im talking about the "Update Build-Depends on the fly" thing and the bad things that it produces. Sorry, but Packages with such autogenerated build-dependencies should not go in our archive, for various reasons, the biggest one is: - Modifying them on the fly can mean that they change without you noticing it. This is not bad for the actual built you do, but now think about later builds. Our autobuilders will get the changed Build-Dependencies and then may built a different thing. Or think about NMUs (eg. for RC fixes and stuff) or in worst case even security updates. A few examples of autogenerated Build-Dependencies which I found in NEW are (trimmed for line-size): 1: debhelper (>=4.2.0), cdbs (>=0.4.23-1.1), build-essential, debhelper (>=4.1.0), quilt, patchutils (>=0.2.25), cdbs (>=0.4.27-1), python-dev Note: I havent doubled the debhelper or cdbs ones, they ARE this way. 2: cdbs (>= 0.4.23-1.1), build-essential, debhelper (>= 4.1.0), patchutils (>= 0.2.25) Note: Here it is mainly b-e - maybe related to an older bug in cdbs, but still an example. I could paste more, but would make mail unneccessary long. :) A solution to this thing is simple: Add another target in the cdbs thing, that is *never* called automaic in the build-process, only if the maintainer runs it with debian/rules target and let that one do the update thingie. Of course maintainer needs to look if it is correct then. The only exception from modifying something in the first paragraph of debian/control is the uploaders field, as it would be insane for some big group-maintained package to do that by hand, but thats it. -- bye Joerg "That's just f***ing great, now the bar for being a cool guy in free software just got raised. It used to be you just had to write a million lines of useful code. Now you've got to get a subpoena from SCO to be cool."
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