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Bug#966396: debhelper: should invoke perl as /usr/bin/perl

From	Dominic Hargreaves <dom@earth.li>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.bugs.dist
Subject	Bug#966396: debhelper: should invoke perl as /usr/bin/perl
Date	2020-08-01 18:40 +0200
Message-ID	<Az2Ia-29W-5@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
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On Thu, Jul 30, 2020 at 03:09:43PM +0200, mattia@debian.org wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 11:17:37PM +0100, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
> > > > This smells like a bug in debhelper to me - perl policy says that perl
> > > > should be /usr/bin/perl in shebangs, and I think the same should apply
> > > > here. I'm amazed this hasn't bit us before, if I'm right (it's been like
> > > > this since at least 2009, and probably forever).
> > > > 
> > > > https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debhelper/-/blob/master/lib/Debian/Debhelper/Buildsystem/perl_build.pm#L44
> > > 
> > > Yes, that was the problem. After "perlbrew off" it works as expected. It is an old problem indeed.
> > > 
> > Filing this as a bug, with a proposed patch at
> > https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debhelper/-/merge_requests/40
> 
> may I disagree?
> I'll admit I never had to do it with perl, but every time people insists
> on using full paths overrinding a program by hacking on PATH suddenly
> becomes much harder.

I'm not persuaded by this argument. Debhelper is invoking perl in order
to build Debian packages, whose contents must be compatible with
/usr/bin/perl. Anyone hacking on something needing to change /usr/bin/perl
is already going to need to deal with replacing /usr/bin/perl in order
to test anything properly.

> As usual, one would expect that their build system is sane, having a
> non-working (or whatever was the problem there) `perl` during a build is
> very much the fault of the person controlling that system, not of
> debhelper.

Not at all. Whilst release builds of packages should of course be built
in clean environments, this is not a reason to break developer workflows
when people happen to use a different perl for day to day activities.

Dominic.

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Bug#966396: debhelper: should invoke perl as /usr/bin/perl Dominic Hargreaves <dom@earth.li> - 2020-07-28 00:30 +0200
  Bug#966396: debhelper: should invoke perl as /usr/bin/perl mattia@debian.org - 2020-07-30 15:20 +0200
    Bug#966396: debhelper: should invoke perl as /usr/bin/perl Dominic Hargreaves <dom@earth.li> - 2020-08-01 18:40 +0200

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