[Bug 1725110] Re: config-package-dev 5.2 broke transforms

[Geoffrey Thomas]

This seems to be in bionic now - nacc, want to sponsor it for artful?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1725110

Title:
  config-package-dev 5.2 broke transforms

Status in config-package-dev package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed
Status in config-package-dev source package in Artful:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  [Impact]

  As reported at https://bugs.debian.org/873966 , a patch in config-
  package-dev 5.2 broke the transform functionality entirely. Any
  attempt to use transforms in a config package causes the build to fail
  with

  Can't use string ("/ARRAY(0x7fda137152e0)") as an ARRAY ref while
  "strict refs" in use at /usr/bin/dh_configpackage line 394.

  config-package-dev is a tool used as a build-dependency in private
  (third-party) Debian packages, so this causes those packages to FTBFS
  in artful when they built successfully in older releases.

  Bruno Maitre reported the problem and provided a patch to fix the bug,
  which has been incorporated into version 5.3 in Debian.

  [Test Case]

  config-package-dev ships one example that uses the transform
  functionality, but the version in 5.2 doesn't quite build right in
  artful (or in Debian unstable). So the easiest way is to grab the
  updated example from git:

  apt install config-package-dev debhelper lynx
  wget http://github.com/sipb/config-package-dev/archive/master.tar.gz
  tar xf master.tar.gz
  cd config-package-dev-master/examples/debhelper/debathena-transform-example-1.0
  dpkg-buildpackage

  With config-package-dev 5.2, this will FTBFS at the "dh_configpackage"
  step; with the fixed version, the package will build. (If you're
  curious you can try dpkg -i'ing the resulting package, which will
  change lynx's home page to default to web.mit.edu.)

  [Regression Potential]

  I'm attaching two debdiffs to this bug. One backports version 5.4 from
  Debian unstable, which in addition to fixing this bug, fixes the
  examples to build on unstable, adds an autopkgtest to make sure the
  examples build, and makes no other code changes. The other just
  cherry-picks the one change.

  Arguably the regression potential for the autopkgtest version is less,
  since if tests pass that gives us confidence that the new version
  works on Ubuntu. (I have been doing my testing on Debian.) I'd prefer
  this version, under the rules for SRUing an upstream microrelease of a
  package with a test suite. But it does change more; if you prefer the
  targeted fix that's fine with me too.

  The regression potential compared to 5.2 is extremely low, since 5.2
  is definitely broken for packages that use transforms, and Bruno's
  patch only affects the code that handles transforms. I am also
  confident in the patch now that I have added autopkgtests and they
  pass on Debian unstable, stretch, and jessie (thanks,
  travis.debian.net!).

  Also, as noted the previous time we SRU'd config-package-dev (LP
  #899732), nothing in the Ubuntu or Debian archive build-depends on
  config-package-dev; it's a tool used by external packages. So even if
  there is a regression it will be low-severity.

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