Bug#859659: lintian: version-substvar-for-external-package raised for dbgsym packages from same source

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

On Wed, 5 Apr 2017 17:15:20 +0100 Luca Boccassi
<luca.boccassi@gmail.com> wrote:
> Package: lintian
> Version: 2.5.50.1
> Severity: normal
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> TL;DR: Lintian reports the version-substvar-for-external-package error when the
> "external package" in question is actually a dbgsym package generated by the
> same source package.
> 
> I maintain a source package, dpdk [1], which builds a great many libraries.
> Consequently, in stretch, a lot of dbgsym packages are generated.
> 
> As a shortcut, a colleague wanted to add an empty metapackage, libdpdk-dbgsym,
> which depends on all the generated -dbgsym packages. Unfortunately Lintian
> raises the (unoverridable) error mentioned above due to a line similar to this:
> 
> Package: libfoo
> ...
> 
> Package: libbar
> ...
> 
> Package: foobar-dbg-meta
> Depends: libfoo-dbgsym (= ${binary:Version}), libbar-dbgsym (=
> ${binary:Version})
> 
> Given all the dbgsym packages have predictable names, and are created from
> packages listed in debian/control (ie: libfoo will be in d/control), could
> Lintian perhaps recognize this and avoid raising this error?
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> Kind regards,
> Luca Boccassi
> 
> [1] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dpdk
> 
> [...]

Hi Luca,

Unfortunately, you would just trade one issue for another (at least in
Debian).  The dbgsym packages is going to a separate archive and the
original packages are therefore not permitted to depend on them (the
debug archive is optional, dependencies being satisfiable is not).

That said, I can appreciate this might make sense for third-party packages.

Thanks,
~Niels