On Wed, 18 Feb 2026 at 08:51, Dominik George <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi, > > >However, despite having DEP-14 enabled in gbp.conf and building from a > >branch called debian/experimental, I have to manually include the > >experimental distribution name in the sbuild config otherwise the > >package gets built against unstable. Perhaps this is expected? > > Packages targeting experimental are built against unstable. This is correct. > > Don't try to break it ;).
I agree with all of your statements and yet remain somewhat confused... Without "$distribution = 'experimental'" in the sbuild config, the unstable _tarball_ is being selected by default when building a package targetting experimental. This may be the intended behaviour. However, that tarball knows nothing about the experimental repo and the build fails. The experimental tarball, created via mmdebstrap from a base of unstable with experimental added as an overlay (per the manpage, more details below) successfully builds the package, _if_ it is used. Is it not expected behaviour for a correctly-configured toolchain to automagically pick e.g. the experimental tarball when building from a suitable branch (debian/experimental, and with the changelog targetting experimental? I have UNSHARE_MMDEBSTRAP_DISTRO_MANGLE configured to build an unstable-based chroot (experimental-amd64.tar) for experimental, with UNSHARE_MMDEBSTRAP_EXTRA_ARGS providing a setup hook to insert the experimental repo apt config into this tarball if DISTRIBUTION matches 'experimental' during tarball creation. This is all taken from the sbuild.conf manpage, and the build works when the experimental tarball is used. With apologies for any continued misunderstandings, Nick
