#947958 adns FTCBFS: help2man

Package:
src:adns
Source:
adns
Submitter:
Helmut Grohne
Date:
2026-09-15 20:11:11 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#947958#5
Date:
2020-01-02 19:16:17 UTC
From:
To:
adns fails to cross build from source, because it uses help2man. In this
case, we can simply rebuild adns for the build architecture to run
help2man. Please consider applying the attached patch or stop using
help2man.

Helmut
#947958#10
Date:
2024-05-05 21:56:24 UTC
From:
To:
Hi.  In 2020 you wrote:

I don't think I want to stop using help2man.  But, I would love to
have considered your patch today (finally!).  Unfortunately you seem
to have omitted to attach it.

Ian.
#947958#15
Date:
2026-09-10 21:47:58 UTC
From:
To:
I wrote:
...

It looks like I didn't CC you on my mail in 2024...

Ian.
#947958#20
Date:
2026-09-11 12:05:05 UTC
From:
To:
Control: tags -1 + patch

Oh dear. I failed to recover the patch. Here is a new one. However this
one makes me want there to be a nicer way to express this.

Helmut
#947958#25
Date:
2026-09-11 19:16:25 UTC
From:
To:
Helmut Grohne writes ("Bug#947958: adns FTCBFS: help2man"):

Thanks.

I see what you mean.  Is this not something that help2man could
provide a helper for maybe?  But maybe this is all specific to adns's
autoconf-but-not-automake setup.

Ian.
#947958#30
Date:
2026-09-11 19:50:34 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Ian,

I fear help2man is a deep rabbit hole. Its use typically breaks cross
building. There are very many different approaches to handle this:

 * Include generated manual pages in the source package and rebuild them
   in native builds only.
 * Declare Build-Depends: $SELF:native <cross> and run help2man on the
   installed tools.
 * Build the package twice. Once for the .deb and once for help2man.
   This is only really feasible when there are few dependencies and the
   package is small. It is what I am suggesting here.
 * Write real manual pages.
 * Write a shell script that extracts the --help output from the source
   code without compilation (rarely works).
 * Skip installing manual pages in cross builds. (breaks
   reproducibility)
 * Fail cross building unless you pass the nodoc build profile.

As you can see, the solution space is big. In general, my impression is
that manual pages generated using help2man can mostly be deleted. Their
only reason to exist is to make lintian happy and you could just add an
override instead.

Helmut