liblopsub fails to cross build from source, because it builds for the
build architecture. The easiest way of fixing this usually is using
dh_auto_build, but this package appears to avoid debhelper where
possible. Hence, I propose using dpkg's buildtools.mk instead. Then, the
upstream build system needs reworking to support cross compilation. It
builds two intermediate binaries run during build. For lopsubgen-stage1,
we may just build it for the build architecture as it is not installed.
lopsubgen however is both run and installed. I suggest building it twice
(but only during cross compilation) and am attaching a patch to this
end. Please propose this patch to upstream as it will enable cross
building liblopsub on other distributions such as Yocto or PtxDist.

Helmut

I'm OK with this approach. IIUC, the first step is to rework Makefile as
per your patch. I've applied this change, but adjusted it slightly to fix
two minor issues:

First, the new rule for the %.build.o target caused warnings from gcc because
lex(1) creates a couple of unused -C functions, resulting in e.g.:

	lopsubgen.c:3009:16: warning: 'yy_top_state' defined but not used [-Wunused-function]
 3009 |     static int yy_top_state  (void)

This was easy to fix by dropping $(STRICT_CFLAGS) for this target.

Second, re-running make(1) after a successful build no longer was a no-op but
regenerated everything. I've worked around this by prepending an independent
patch which instructs make(1) to never remove any intermediate files.

Please have a look at the current "pu" branch of the public repo, in particular
the "Rework Makefile to support cross compilation." commit which has your
authorship. If you have no objections, I'll merge the topic branch which
contains this commit into master.

Thanks
Andre

I'm OK with this approach. IIUC, the first step is to rework Makefile as
per your patch. I've applied this change, but adjusted it slightly to fix
two minor issues:

First, the new rule for the %.build.o target caused warnings from gcc because
lex(1) creates a couple of unused -C functions, resulting in e.g.:

	lopsubgen.c:3009:16: warning: 'yy_top_state' defined but not used [-Wunused-function]
 3009 |     static int yy_top_state  (void)

This was easy to fix by dropping $(STRICT_CFLAGS) for this target.

Second, re-running make(1) after a successful build no longer was a no-op but
regenerated everything. I've worked around this by prepending an independent
patch which instructs make(1) to never remove any intermediate files.

Please have a look at the current "pu" branch of the public repo, in particular
the "Rework Makefile to support cross compilation." commit which has your
authorship. If you have no objections, I'll merge the topic branch which
contains this commit into master.

Thanks
Andre

Hello Andre,

Thank you for looking deeper and improving my patch. This all looks good
to me.

Helmut

Great. I've now merged the topic branch, pushed out the updated master branch
and tagged it as v1.0.6.

The next step is to update the debian branch. You can see my attempt to do
so in the current pu branch, which is now based on the debian branch and
has the following commits on top of it:

* Merge of the master branch to get the improved Makefile. This is an "evil
merge" because it also modifies debian/changelog and patches debian/rules
to enable dpkg's buildtools.

* A second patch which changes debian/changelog again to match the new
upstream version 1.0.6.

If this is the right way to move forward, I'll forward the debian branch to
match pu, then tag it as 1.0.6-1.

Best
Andre

Hi Andre,

given that we once worked together nicely with the ball package in
Debian Med I'm guessing you are fine with a NMU of liblopsub.  I
followed the rule to upload to DELAYED/15 anyway to give you sufficient
time to insist.

I noticed that your private repository contained changelog entries
pretending releases of a new upstream version but these never have
reached the Debian mirrors.  Thus I merged these into a single entry
closing all open bugs (I opened two further ones to follow the NMU
procedure and document what issues are closed in the NMU).  You can
find all changes in

https://salsa.debian.org/debian/liblopsub

and I've granted your ID on Salsa Maintainer permissions on this
repository.  Please let me know if I should cancel the upload.

Kind regards
   Andreas.

PS: I intend to migrate tfortune in a similar manner to the Debian
    name space on Salsa.

Hi Andreas

On Mon, Aug 31, 13:57, Andreas Tille wrote

You are confusing me with someone else, as I've never worked with the ball
package in Debian Med.

Right. I proposed a way forward, but got no reply from the any of the Debian
people involved. See Bug#1086623.

Due to this bug, both tfortune and lopsub were removed from testing on July
26th. Given this and the fact that I already spent way too much time on
an issue that should take five minutes to resolve, I decided to not invest
further time on Debian integration issues. IOW, Debian just lost a contributor.

In fact, I already removed the tfortune web page and its git repo, continuing
development non-publicly. This is why the vcs tracker complains. The only
reason the lopsub repo and web page are still online is that other projects
of mine (see the link in the signature below) depend on it. I'm planning to
remove the "debian" branch of lopsub, though, because it is not needed to
build the package from source.

I might reconsider this decision if somebody volunteers to act as the
Debian maintainer for both tfortune and lopsub. This person's job would be
to maintain the debian/ directory to improve the integration with the Debian
infrastructure, to upload new versions, and to coordinate non-Debian related
changes with me. If nobody is willing to do this work, the packages should
probably get removed.

Thanks
Andre

Hi Andre

Am Wed, Sep 02, 2026 at 04:37:40PM +0200 schrieb Andre Noll:

It was removed due to bug #1126662 actually.

That's sad to hear.  Does this mean you want to orphan your packages?
If so I can do a QA upload and make the QA team maintainer.

I do not understand why the fact that you are not happy to maintain some
software in Debian (which I can understand to some extend) is a
motivation to remove a repository containing GPL-3 software (which can
be used by other distributions or users who want to compile it from
scratch) from the web.

Its actually very sensible to remove the debian/ dir from upstream source
repositories.

The fact that you are seeking for a new maintainer is not obvious at
all.  As I said I could do QA uploads and file according Orphan bugs for
both packages.  This expresses that a new maintainer is needed.

Alternatively to orphaning you can file a removal bug.  Debian has a
strict package ownership model.  So you are the person who can decide
whether orphaning or removing would be appropirate and you can ask for
removal as well (Hint: `reportbug other` and follow the menu).

I admit I'd be motivated to do a QA upload of
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/liblopsub
since I've spent some time into it and doing something similar with
tfortune would be easy as well.  Just let me know what you want to do
and how I can help you in doing so.

Kind regards
    Andreas.

Hi again,

Am Wed, Sep 02, 2026 at 09:18:23PM +0200 schrieb Andreas Tille:

Can you please clarify whether you want to orphan this (and the tfortune)
package?  I'm reading the "Debian just lost a contributor" as == "I do not
intend to maintain this package any more".

If I do not hear from you I will do a QA upload before the NMU of
  liblopsub_1.0.6-1
will hit unstable.

I admit I'm sorry that you made this bad experience with Debian and
you are kindly invited to come back again.

Kind regards
    Andreas.

On Wed, Sep 09, 16:56, Andreas Tille wrote

I'm still willing to maintain the tfortune and lopsub code, i.e. everything
except the debian/ directories, and I'm happy to work on features and bugs
that affect *users* of both packages. It's just that I won't spend time on
the Debian maintenance any more, including RFS, uploads, CI, lintian, salsa
and all that. My attempt to get familiar with these workflows was both time
consuming and fruitless, and I won't continue this frustrating experience.

No reason to be sorry, it's not your fault.

I've resurrected the tfortune web page and re-enabled the git repo, so feel
free to do whatever it takes to make the bots happy. But please keep me out
of the loop unless the code itself needs to be changed.

Thanks
Andre

Hi Andre,

thank you for the quick response.

Am Wed, Sep 09, 2026 at 07:47:32PM +0200 schrieb Andre Noll:

OK, that is upstream.

Yep, that's Debian maintenance.  So you do not want to stay the Maintainer
of the Debian packaging.  This is what I wanted to know and your statement
is the permission to officially orphan the Debian packaging.  Thank you,
this is the helpful information I was seeking for.

Yep, that's upstream work and its nice you are doing so.

Understood.  This will be taken over by Debian QA team then.

Fair enough - even if I'm a bit sorry to hear this anyway.

I did not understood it the way that it would be my fault.  I simply
like to onboard newcomers.  But well, your status update is very helpful
to let others continue.

ACK.

All the best
   Andreas.

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
liblopsub, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 1115556@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org> (supplier of updated liblopsub package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:38:33 +0200
Source: liblopsub
Architecture: source
Version: 1.0.6-1
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian QA Group <packages@qa.debian.org>
Changed-By: Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org>
Closes: 1115556 1126662 1146287 1146288
Changes:
 liblopsub (1.0.6-1) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * QA upload.
 .
   [ Andre Noll ]
   * New upstream version
     Closes: #1115556
   * Use dh_installchangelogs. Closes: #1126662
   * Use custom regex in watch file
 .
   [ Andreas Tille ]
   * Set Vcs fields to Salsa in Debian namespace
     Closes: #1146287
   * d/rules: use short dh consequently
   * d/copyright:
      - DEP5
      - more detailed
   * Add d/lrc.config
   * Bump debhelper from old 10 to 13.
     Closes: #1146288
   * Remove redundant Priority: optional from source stanza.
   * Upgrade upstream signing key to new packet format.
   * Update standards version to 4.7.4, no changes needed.
   * Set debhelper-compat version in Build-Depends.
   * d/control: Remove Rules-Requires-Root: no which is default
   * Remove unused lintian-overrides
   * d/watch: version=5
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 5dd0f9346f5eec0818fce20d6f0e7fe96948fae7 6116 liblopsub_1.0.6-1.debian.tar.xz
 2194071c8e52cea01f7dac429fd9bfb5a7b3169b 6829 liblopsub_1.0.6-1_amd64.buildinfo
Checksums-Sha256:
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Files:
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