Bug#1094604: libgsf: please don't build-depend on gobject-introspection-bin

Simon McVittie

2025-01-29 10:10:01 UTC

Source: libgsf
Version: 1.14.53-1
Severity: normal
Tags: patch

Please revert
<https://salsa.debian.org/debian/libgsf/-/commit/16ce503c0d86e0bc40b155d6b62b3159cf6f77ed>.
gobject-introspection-bin is an implementation detail, and is not meant to
be depended on directly by anything except the other binary packages built
by src:gobject-introspection:

$ dpkg -s gobject-introspection-bin
...
This package contains the implementation for various tools.
Please do not depend on this package directly: use gobject-introspection
instead.

The reason to put the underlying implementation in
gobject-introspection-bin and architecture-specific wrappers in
gobject-introspection is to do with the interaction between multiarch
and cross-compiling. The correct package to build-depend on, to get the
appropriate ${tuple}-g-ir-scanner for the host architecture, is always
gobject-introspection.

Is there some tool or piece of documentation that made you think that
gobject-introspection-bin was a better package to build-depend on? If yes,
we should get that tool or documentation fixed.

I suspect the only reason libgsf is still building successfully is that it
also Build-Depends on libgirepository1.0-dev, which is essentially a
legacy metapackage, pulling in gobject-introspection, libgirepository-1.0-dev
and various gir1.2-*-dev packages.

E: libgsf source: missing-build-dependency-for-dh-addon gir (does not satisfy gobject-introspection:any | dh-sequence-gir:any) [debian/rules]

because lintian has been taught to behave as though gobject-introspection
is the package containing the gir sequence (even though, as an
implementation detail, the file is physically in gobject-introspection-bin).

Thanks,
smcv