[syslinux] Fail to build debian package syslinux-common

[Lukas Schwaighofer]

Hi Pierre,

sorry for not responding sooner.  I'm not looking at this mailing list
regularly and only just now saw your mail.


On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 16:42:49 +0200 (CEST)
Pierre HITSCH via Syslinux <syslinux at syslinux.org> wrote:

> First of all here is my setup : Debian 10.12 through VirtualBox 6.0.
> For some reasons, I have to build the debian package
> "syslinux-common". I did the following steps :
> 
> apt-get source syslinux-common
> cd syslinux-6.04~git20190206.bf6db5b4+dfsg1
> apt build-dep syslinux-common
> debuild -b -us -ui -uc
> 
> This process fails with the following error happening in the
> dh_missing process :
> (...)
> 
> It complains about exe file not installed on the system, I tried to
> build only the architecture independent binary packages (-A option),
> resulting with the same error. Architecture specific binary packages
> only (-B option) fails also with the same error.
> 
> I wonder why debuild complains about exe files not installed and how
> to fix it.

You should be able to build the package by modifying the file
`debian/not-installed` before running `debuild …` and adding the
following line to it:

usr/share/syslinux/*.exe


Some context of why this is happening: Debian's tools fail the build as
a safety check if there are files that the syslinux build system would
like to install but they are not put in any Debian package.

In your case:  Since we don't need the Windows executables we can add
the entry entry above to let Debian's tools know we're fine with not
installing them.  I assume this is happening to you because you have
all the necessary tools to build Windows executables installed on your
system.  Thus the syslinux build system builds them by default and we
need to tell Debian's tools to ignore them.

I consider this a bug in the src:syslinux Debian package, so feel free
to file one.  In any case I'll include the change mentioned above in a
future Debian upload.

In general, if you encounter build problems with a Debian package, I'd
recommend using Debian's bugtracker since that should reach the persons
responsible for maintaining the Debian builds specifically.

Regards
Lukas