Package: lintian
Version: 2.117.0
Severity: normal
For context, ostree_2024.1-1 runs "dh $@ --with=gir" in d/rules.
`lintian -Ii ostree_2024.1-1.dsc` reports:
E: ostree source: missing-build-dependency-for-dh-addon gir (does not satisfy
gobject-introspection-bin:any) [debian/rules]
However, the gobject-introspection-bin package is an implementation
detail, and is not meant to be relied on. Packages that depend on the gir
addon should depend on either dh-sequence-gir or gobject-introspection
(which, behind the scenes, depends on gobject-introspection-bin), and
ostree correctly depends on gobject-introspection. I don't think this
is an uncommon pattern.
I don't know how best to avoid this in Lintian - I see that it's doing
the equivalent of
`apt-file search /usr/share/perl5/Debian/Debhelper/Sequence/gir.pm`
in order to generate data/debhelper/add_ons.json. Perhaps
lib/Lintian/Data/Debhelper/Addons.pm could learn to have a hand-maintained
list of special cases, "if you would generate a dependency on package x,
use package y instead", and add
gobject-introspection-bin => gobject-introspection to that list?
I could work around this by moving gir.pm to gobject-introspection and
asking the lintian maintainers to regenerate add_ons.json; but if I
did that, it would be duplicated in the archive, once per architecture,
which doesn't seem ideal.
data/debhelper/commands.json also mentions gobject-introspection-bin,
therefore whatever part of Lintian reads that file will have the same
problem.
Thanks,
smcv
