Dear Lintian Maintainers,

To avoind needlessy pulling in python3-pip & python3-setuptools
in ever single flit run, the engine "python3-flit" has been spun-out.

Please rework lintian to check for "python3-flit | flit" instead of "flit".

Greeting

It currently checks for flit:any. I initially thought I could just add python3-flit:any
and that would just work but I saw python3-flit is not marked `M-A: foreign`.

I suspect depends on setuptools is the reason for that? In that case :any should be simply
skipped, right?

CC'ing -cross for more advice.

Yup, please give me a green light & I upload

diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index ad0b765..1ff3ffa 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+flit (4.1.0-4) unstable; urgency=medium
+
+  * Mark python3-flit "Multi-Arch: foreign", thanks Nilesh Patra
+
+ -- Alexandre Detiste <tchet@debian.org>  Thu, 24 Sep 2026 19:11:26 +0200
+
 flit (4.1.0-3) unstable; urgency=medium

   * Split-out the build-engine in the new "python3-flit" package,
diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
index 682f839..38873b6 100644
--- a/debian/control
+++ b/debian/control
@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@ Vcs-Browser:
https://salsa.debian.org/python-team/packages/flit

 Package: python3-flit
 Architecture: all
+Multi-Arch: foreign
 Depends:
  ${misc:Depends},
  ${python3:Depends},


Le jeu. 24 sept. 2026 à 18:19, Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> a écrit :

package carries "Multi-Arch: allowed". Neither flit nor python3-flit
have that Multi-Arch value. So both python3-flit:any and flit:any would
be universally unsatisfiable.

flit is expressly meant for pure Python modules (those that don't ship C
sources). As such its behavior can largely be assumed
architecture-independent. Beyond this, python3-flit is a pure Python
module with no architecture-dependent dependencies. The flit package
contains the flit CLI and even if it uses architecture-dependent modules
(e.g. python3-charset-normalizer), its CLI interface also likely is
architecture-independent.

As such I think that both packages should be marked Multi-Arch: foreign.
(This is confirming what Alexandre replied, but also asking for the
other annotation.)

From a multiarch pov, I concur with the package split #1148412. It is
what enables this marking. In the pre-split way, we could not sensibly
mark flit Multi-Arch: foreign, because we could not tell that e.g.
python3-requests was a CLI dependency rather than a library dependency.
After the split, we can tell and mark both.

I recognize that the original motivation for splitting was not
multiarch, but clarity and also concur with that aspect.

Helmut

Yes, hence the original question to skip ":any" in the lintian check -- I did not see initially that flit was an arch:all package when I was about to add python3-flit:any, and only later noticed it does not make much sense.

Maybe the :any was an old heuristic and nobody paid attention to it. I will drop it also for flit:any in lintian.

Thanks for responding!
Nilesh

Thank you Helmut for the in-depth analysis.

From time to time we might be annoyed by the same things for different reasons.

I'm working on reducing the key_package set and help2man usage stands
in the way;
a handful of packages needs to be converted to use a cached snapshot in debian/
in case of <!nodoc> profile is activated. I understand that help2man also hurts
cross-building.

We will meet again.

Le jeu. 24 sept. 2026 à 21:19, Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de> a écrit :

Hello,

Bug #1148880 in lintian reported by you has been fixed in the
Git repository and is awaiting an upload. You can see the commit
message below and you can check the diff of the fix at:

https://salsa.debian.org/lintian/lintian/-/commit/cfe4d941d33e0d7a76faca938523750984b5118f

(this message was generated automatically)
-- 
Greetings

https://bugs.debian.org/1148880

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
lintian, 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 1148880@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Louis-Philippe Véronneau <pollo@debian.org> (supplier of updated lintian 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: Fri, 09 Oct 2026 17:16:31 -0400
Source: lintian
Architecture: source
Version: 2.142.0
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Debian Lintian Maintainers <lintian-maint@debian.org>
Changed-By: Louis-Philippe Véronneau <pollo@debian.org>
Closes: 1147715 1148076 1148185 1148716 1148838 1148880 1149119
Changes:
 lintian (2.142.0) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   [ Louis-Philippe Véronneau ]
   * Update old and ancient Python versions and simplify tags' code
 .
   [ Nilesh Patra ]
   * Testsuite.pm: resolve d/t/control via `->child` call for special case
     where d/tests is a file and simplify logic
   * Systemd.pm: Make key extraction non-greedy so it does not consume the
     space in key value (Closes: #1147715)
   * tests(systemd-complex-service-file): Adjust hints with fix for #1147715
   * tags(script with missing dependencies): Mention about making script
     non-executable for cases where the script would not be used by the package
     directly (Closes: #1148716)
   * Drop tag `go-source-package-does-not-include-version` and do not emit
     `go-library-package-does-not-include-version` with `oldlibs` as section
     (Closes: #1148838)
   * tests(golang-package-without-version-suffix): tweak test to check against
     #1148838
   * Python.pm: Add python3-flit also to check for `flit_core.buildapi`
     (Closes: #1148880)
   * Python.pm: Drop `:any` from the check for python modules for dependency
     checking in pyproject.toml
   * tests: Adjust python-could-use-pyproject-* with `:any` dropped
   * Rules.pm: Do not emit `override_dh_foo-does-not-call-dh_foo` when override
     targets use `$(DH_OVERRIDDEN_COMMAND)` (Closes: #1149119)
   * tests(rules-override-dh-foo-does-not-call-dh-foo-unrel): Check for
     `$(DH_OVERRIDDEN_COMMAND)` as a check for #1149119
 .
   [ Soren Stoutner ]
   * Bump font-in-non-font-package from severity info to warning
     (Closes: #1148076)
   * Add a woff-font-in-wrong-dir tag (Closes: #1148185)
 .
   [ Sébastien Villemot ]
   * arch-dep-package-has-big-usr-share: fix devref section pointer
 .
   [ Sylvestre Ledru ]
   * Index/Elf.pm: ask readelf only for what we parse
   * Spelling.pm: cut the per-word work in check_spelling
 .
   [ Lucas Nussbaum ]
   * Group.pm: fix --perf-debug to actually emit performance CSV
   * bin/lintian: export LINTIAN_PERF_DEBUG and let Index default from env
   * Index: time the lazy data collectors and report under -d and --perf-debug
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