[BPO] debhelper in focal-backports not usable for i386 package building (missing dependency)

I think we have three choices here:

1. revert Matthias' change from debhelper/13.3.4ubuntu1 (2021-03-19) that make use of debugedit (honestly I don't even understand *why* he did that)
2. backport debugedit too (honestly I don't remember if that would be enough to make it build on i386, however, or it also needs an addition to the i386 whitelist)
3. get the archive admins to add src:rpm in the i386 whitelist, and rebuild it (if that's enough to make it build and doesn't require more).

I'd be for option 1 here.

comments welcome.

I am able to build src:rpm for focal i386 using pbuilder, as long as p7zip-full:i386 is built first.

So it would need 2 addition to the i386 whitelist.

Feel free to bring an archive administrator in the loop, I think it's only
them who have the power to do that (if we want to go through that route).
Except that I just realized that rpm (and debugedit) in focal are in
universe. So it would also need a MIR, which is definitely not happening
for a stable release.
I also guess that's the reason debugedit was split off rpm.

So I suppose we either need to check whether backporting debugedit would
make it build on i386, or revert that change in debhelper.

On Tue, 22 Mar 2022, 1:31 pm David Ward, <email address hidden> wrote:

> I am able to build src:rpm for focal i386 using pbuilder, as long as
> p7zip-full:i386 is built first.
>
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> Title:
> debhelper in focal-backports not usable for i386 package building
> (missing dependency)
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archive admins dont think i386ing the RPM source is a good idea based on my brief discussiom in #ubuntu-release

debugedit has splitsource in later versions, perhaps a split-source is needed here. However I would suggest we defer to archive admins for best approach here

> 1. revert Matthias' change from debhelper/13.3.4ubuntu1 (2021-03-19)
> that make use of debugedit (honestly I don't even understand *why*
> he did that)

The file names in the dbgsym packages are based on a hash derived from the contents of the files. This leads to conflicting files for similar object files, like in versioned packages openjdk-11, openjdk-14, and maybe others. debugedit allows to also use a seed for this hash, and avoids conflicting files.

also backporting debugedit sounds like the correct thing to do

> also backporting debugedit sounds like the correct thing to do

I don't think we can backport debugedit for i386 currently, since debugedit's i386 build depends on debhelper which depends on debugedit's i386 build.

Maybe we can do a build without the backports pocket in a PPA, then binary-copy debugedit over to -backports, or some other magic to work around the circular dep.

The backporters team decided in a previous mtg to take the approach of reverting the use of debugedit.

uploaded to -backports queues for bionic and focal

uploads approved.