[maemo-developers] up-to-date debhelper and cdbs

[From: Thomas Tanner]

Hi,

many Debian packages require more recent versions of debhelper
or cdbs than the outdated ones installed in the scratchbox devkits
(debhelper 5.0.42 and cdbs 0.4.48, both more than 3 years old).
The newer version make packaging also much easier.

I think I have found a minimally invasive workaround how to
use the latest version of debhelper (7.4.10) and cdbs (0.4.62)
in the SDK and autobuilder (see later).

HOWTO:
In your debian/control file replace the dependencies

debhelper (>= 7) with debhelper7
cdbs (> 0.4.48) with cdbs-dh7

add the following to the beginning of your debian/rules

PATH:=/usr/bin:$(PATH)
export PATH
SBOX_REDIRECT_IGNORE:=$(shell echo /usr/bin/{perl,dh_*} | sed "s/ /:/g")
export SBOX_REDIRECT_IGNORE

In your SDK you can run

apt-get install debhelper7 cdbs-dh7

which will automatically remove the old versions,
which were overwritten by the devkits anyway.
To restore the old versions use

apt-get remove debhelper7 cdbs-dh7
apt-get install debhelper cdbs

PROBLEM:
autobuilder should automatically install these build-depends
but currently it fails with

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  debhelper
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  bsdmainutils bsdutils debhelper7 groff-base man-db
E: Packages need to be removed but remove is disabled.

see the buildlog of a package used for testing the workaround
https://garage.maemo.org/builder/fremantle/dpkg-repack_1.31maemo1/i386.root.log.FAILED.txt

Would it be possible to allow package removal in autobuilder?

cheers,
-- 
Thomas Tanner ------
email: tanner at gmx.de
GnuPG: 1024/5924D4DD