Chapter 7. Sanitization of the source

Table of Contents

7.1. Fix with Files-Excluded
7.2. Fix with debian/rules clean
7.3. Fix with extend-diff-ignore
7.4. Fix with tar-ignore
7.5. Fix with git clean -dfx

There are a few cases which require to sanitize the source to prevent contaminating the generated Debian source package.

Es gibt mehrere Methoden, die Aufnahme ungewünschter Inhalte zu vermeiden

This is suitable for avoiding non DFSG contents in the upstream source tarball.

  • List the files to be removed in the Files-Excluded stanza of the debian/copyright file.
  • List the URL to download the upstream tarball in the debian/watch file.
  • Führen Sie den Befehl uscan aus, um einen neuen Tarball der Originalautoren herunterzuladen.

    • Alternatively, use the gbp import-orig --uscan --pristine-tar command.
  • mk-origtargz invoked from uscan removes excluded files from the upstream tarball and repack it as a clean tarball.
  • Der resultierende Tarball hat die Versionsnummer mit einer zusätzlichen Endung +dfsg.

See COPYRIGHT FILE EXAMPLES in mk-origtargz(1).

This is suitable for avoiding auto-generated files and removes them in the debian/rules clean target

[Note]Note

The debian/rules clean target is called before the dpkg-source --build command by the dpkg-buildpackage command and the dpkg-source --build command ignores removed files.

This is for the non-native Debian package.

The problem of extraneous diffs can be fixed by ignoring changes made to parts of the source tree by adding the extend-diff-ignore=…​ line in the debian/source/options file.

debian/source/options to exclude the config.sub, config.guess and Makefile files: 

# Don't store changes on autogenerated files
extend-diff-ignore = "(^|/)(config\.sub|config\.guess|Makefile)$"

[Note]Note

This approach always works, even when you can’t remove the file. So it saves you having to make a backup of the unmodified file just to be able to restore it before the next build.

[Tip]Tip

If the debian/source/local-options file is used instead, you can hide this setting from the generated source package. This may be useful when the local non-standard VCS files interfere with your packaging.

This is for the native Debian package.

You can exclude some files in the source tree from the generated tarball by tweaking the file glob by adding the tar-ignore=…​ lines in the debian/source/options or debian/source/local-options files.

[Note]Note

If, for example, the source package of a native package needs files with the file extension .o as a part of the test data, the setting in Section 4.5, “devscripts setup” is too aggressive. You can work around this problem by dropping the -I option for DEBUILD_DPKG_BUILDPACKAGE_OPTS in Section 4.5, “devscripts setup” while adding the tar-ignore=…​ lines in the debian/source/local-options file for each package.

The problem of extraneous contents in the second build can be avoided by restoring the source tree by committing the source tree to the Git repository before the first build.

You can restore the source tree before the second package build. For example:

 $ git reset --hard
 $ git clean -dfx

This works because the dpkg-source command ignores the contents of the typical VCS files in the source tree with the DEBUILD_DPKG_BUILDPACKAGE_OPTS setting in `"Section 4.5, “devscripts setup”`".

[Tip]Tip

If the source tree is not managed by a VCS, you should run git init; git add -A .; git commit before the first build.