Package: debhelper Version: 8.9.12 Severity: wishlist With the recent introduction of executable config files, there's a fear that we could end up with a lot of very different implementations that essentially accomplish the same thing.
To get ahead of that, I'm proposing a different option: a script (or a set of scripts) that expand various kinds of variables within an executable file. One would use this script as the interpreter for the script, the running script would slurp in its own source, do the substitutions, and echo the results back. This way, the easy things would remain easy, just a "#!/usr/lib/debhelper/dh_subst" away, and harder things would still be possible. Everybody wins! I was thinking of multiple scripts, all residing under /usr/lib/debhelper/dh_subst_*, and a wrapper script, dh_subst, that would run all of the dh_subst_* scripts. We could have dh_subst_multiarch, dh_subst_env and similar scripts, all doing one thing only. The end result would become something like the following .install file: ,---- | #!/usr/lib/debhelper/dh_subst | debian/tmp/usr/lib/${DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH}/libfoo.so.* | debian/${VARIANT}/foo.conf /etc/foo/ `---- I have a half-baked implementation too, but documentation and tests are missing, and as such, I'm not comfortable showing it just yet. I'd like to hear your opinion about this suggestion before I go further. -- System Information: Debian Release: wheezy/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 3.1.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages debhelper depends on: ii binutils 2.22-1 ii dpkg-dev 1.16.1.2 ii file 5.09-2 ii html2text 1.3.2a-15 ii man-db 2.6.0.2-3 ii perl 5.14.2-6 ii po-debconf 1.0.16+nmu1 debhelper recommends no packages. Versions of packages debhelper suggests: pn dh-make <none> -- no debconf information -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org