Attention, all maintainers of third-party debhelper commands. Sometime
in the next week or two, I plan to put dehelper 7.1.x in unstable. This
version, currently in experimental, has a significant change to its
command option parser, and a few[1] third-party commands need changes to
keep all the options they use working.


From the changelog:

* Move many command-specific options to only be accepted by the command
that uses them. Affected options are:
-x, -r, -R, -l, -L, -m,
--include-conffiles, --no-restart-on-upgrade, --no-start,
--restart-after-upgrade, --init-script, --filename, --flavor, --autodest,
--libpackage, --add-udeb, --dpkg-shlibdeps-params,
--dpkg-gencontrol-params, --update-rcd-params, --major, --remove-d,
--dirs-only, --keep-debug, --version-info, --list-missing, --fail-missing,
--language, --until, --after, --before, --remaining, --with
* If any third-party debhelper commands use any of the above options,
they will be broken, and need to be changed to pass options to init().


Example:

SYNOPSIS
dh_makeclilibs [debhelper options] [-r] [-V[dependancies]] [-mminversion] [-lnextincompatible] [-Xitem]

From the synopsis, we can see this command uses
removed options -r, -m, and -l. It also turns out to
use --version-info.

To re-add support for these flags, look for the call
to `init()`, and change it to include an options parameter:

init(options => {
"r" => $dh{R_FLAG},
"m=s" => $dh{M_PARAMS},
"l=s" => $dh{L_PARAMS},
"version-info:s" => $dh{V_FLAG},
});

The values inside the hash are the same as would be passed
to Getopt::Long. -m and -l require a string parameter, thus
the "=s". --version-info can optionally take a string parameter,
thus the ":s".

The $dh{R_FLAG}, $dh{M_PARAMS} etc variables are the ones
historically set by debhelper when these options are set.

With that simple change made, dh_makeclilibs will be compatable with
both the old and new versions of debhelper. So no versioned
dependency is needed.


Appendix:

Here is an excerpt of the getopt options from stable's debhelper,
showing how it handled each of the removed options.

"x" => $dh{INCLUDE_CONFFILES}, # is -x for some unknown historical reason..
"include-conffiles" => $dh{INCLUDE_CONFFILES},

"remove-d" => $dh{D_FLAG},
"dirs-only" => $dh{D_FLAG},

"r" => $dh{R_FLAG},
"no-restart-on-upgrade" => $dh{R_FLAG},
"no-start" => $dh{NO_START},
"R|restart-after-upgrade" => $dh{RESTART_AFTER_UPGRADE},

"keep-debug" => $dh{K_FLAG},

"update-rcd-params=s", => $dh{U_PARAMS},
"dpkg-shlibdeps-params=s", => $dh{U_PARAMS},
"dpkg-gencontrol-params=s", => $dh{U_PARAMS},

"l=s", => $dh{L_PARAMS},

"m=s", => $dh{M_PARAMS},
"major=s" => $dh{M_PARAMS},

"version-info:s" => $dh{V_FLAG},

"init-script=s" => $dh{INIT_SCRIPT},

"filename=s" => $dh{FILENAME},

"flavor=s" => $dh{FLAVOR},

"autodest" => $dh{AUTODEST},

"list-missing" => $dh{LIST_MISSING},

"fail-missing" => $dh{FAIL_MISSING},

"L|libpackage=s" => $dh{LIBPACKAGE},

"error-handler=s" => $dh{ERROR_HANDLER},

"add-udeb=s" => $dh{SHLIBS_UDEB},

"language=s" => $dh{LANGUAGE},

"until=s" => $dh{UNTIL},
"after=s" => $dh{AFTER},
"before=s" => $dh{BEFORE},
"remaining" => $dh{REMAINING},
"with=s" => &AddWith,

--
see shy jo

[1] I had to read through about 1/3 of all the existing third-party
commands I could find in order to find the one example above
of a command that uses these options.

Le dimanche 15 février 2009 Ã* 15:19 -0500, Joey Hess a écrit :
> * Move many command-specific options to only be accepted by the command
> that uses them. Affected options are:

> --version-info

This option disappears, but does -V stays around ?

(The dh_pysupport documentation only talks about -V and I don’t think
anyone is using --version-info.)

--
.'`.
: :' : We are debian.org. Lower your prices, surrender your code.
`. `' We will add your hardware and software distinctiveness to
`- our own. Resistance is futile.

> This option disappears, but does -V stays around ?

Yes, -V stays while its long form doesn't.

--
see shy jo