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• Launchpad Entry: debug-package-removal

• Packages affected: pkg-create-dbgsym

Summary

With the ddeb archive on peple.ubuntu.com the need for -dbg packages is greatly diminished. We should remove those packages that only contain debug symbols and that are already available via ddebs in people.ubuntu.com.

Release Note

TBD

Rationale

With the automatic generation of debug packages in ubuntu explicit building of debug packages is no longer needed (unless there are special circumstances). We can remove them from the archive.

Design

The package pkg-create-dbgsym is modified so that it automatically removes -dbg packages on build. There needs to be a whitelist for cases where we want -dbg packages (like python) and also some heuristics to check debian/rules if the build is done with some special options (like -O0). Initially we check if the only content is /usr/lib/debug and /usr/share/doc. If this is the case, the -dbg package can probably be removed.

The pkg-create-dbgsym is run during the ubuntu builds. This approach has the advantage that we do not need to modify the source packages because all happens during build time.

All -dbg packages should have strict versionized dependencies. On upgrade they will get removed automatically because those dependencies can be no longer satisfied. No special code is required here.

Test cases

The following cases needs to be tested for the modfied pkg-create-dbgsym

• -dbg package with no other content than /usr/lib/debug, /u/s/doc
• -dbg package with special build options and other content

During the upgrade tests we need to check if the -dbg packages get removed and if not, we need to add them to update-managers "ForceObsoletes" field.

CategorySpec