Debian Bug report logs - #920701
diffoscope: Please document and allow to disable automatic inclusion of dbgsym packages

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Johannes 'josch' Schauer <josch@debian.org>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: diffoscope: Please document and allow to disable automatic inclusion of dbgsym packages

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2019 13:39:55 +0100

Package: diffoscope
Version: 108
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

steps to reproduce:

Input: two directories dirA and dirB with some sbuild build artifacts,
so .changes file, .buildinfo file, .deb and .dbgsym packages.

Command: diffoscope dirA/foo.deb dirB/foo.deb

Expectation: diffoscope accesses dirA/foo.deb and dirB/foo.deb and
recursively analyses its content to show the differences.

Reality: diffoscope tries to be clever and also accesses dirA/foo.dbgsym
and dirB/foo.dbgsym in addition to the explicitly specified input files
in an attempt to produce more useful output.

The problems are:

 - I assume that most people would expect that if they give two files to
   a "diff" command, then that command will only use these two files as
   input and will not implicitly add other files.

 - If I wanted diffoscope to also consider the .dbgsym packages, then I
   would've given diffoscope the .changes file and not the .deb files
   directly

 - I have a package with a 180 MB .dbgsym package. I cancelled
   diffoscope after it was running for over two hours.  Even when I add
   --exclude-command=objdump, diffoscope will still take 3 minutes,
   because extracting two 180 MB xz-archives takes a while. Only when I
   copy the .deb packages elsewhere, is diffoscope done in 1.5 minutes.

 - This behaviour is not documented

 - This behaviour cannot be switched off

I suggest to at least:

 - document this behaviour because I find it extremely unexpected for a
   diff program to consider other input files outside the ones that were
   explicitly specified

 - add an option to switch off this behaviour because I don't want to
   always have to copy my .deb packages elsewhere to achieve reasonable
   runtimes

Though personally I would instead remove this magic completely or change
the default for the following reasons:

 - even if it's documented, the current default behaviour is still
   unexpected for a diff program

 - if the user wants diffoscope to consider the .dbgsym packages, then
   they can just ask for a comparison of the .changes file instead

 - after it has been switched off by default, there could be a command
   line argument to switch this behaviour on for the users who want or
   need it

Thanks!

cheers, josch

Message #10 received at 920701@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Mattia Rizzolo <mattia@mapreri.org>

To: 920701@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: diffoscope: Please document and allow to disable automatic inclusion of dbgsym packages

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2019 16:49:02 +0100 (CET)

[03:02:13 PM] 20<mapreri>30 josch: one reason for not removing that feature completely, is that it can be hard to create a .chnages file if all you have are the .debs, and there are good reason for diffoscope to import the debug information while running objdump
[03:02:38 PM] 20<mapreri>30 for sure we could at least add a log.info(importing .dbgsym) line though, at least it would be much less surprising

Message #15 received at 920701@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>

To: 920701@bugs.debian.org

Cc: Johannes josch Schauer <josch@debian.org>

Subject: Re: diffoscope: Please document and allow to disable automatic inclusion of dbgsym packages

Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2019 17:21:38 +0100

forwarded 920701 https://salsa.debian.org/reproducible-builds/diffoscope/issues/44
thanks

I've forwarded this upstream here:

  https://salsa.debian.org/reproducible-builds/diffoscope/issues/44


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
       `-

Message #22 received at 920701@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>

To: 920701@bugs.debian.org

Cc: Johannes josch Schauer <josch@debian.org>

Subject: Re: diffoscope: Please document and allow to disable automatic inclusion of dbgsym packages

Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2019 17:37:58 +0100

tags 920701 + pending
thanks

I've implemented that here:

  https://salsa.debian.org/reproducible-builds/diffoscope/commit/5ef24a6a9b424b7dd4906b185c43c0553e0f07c0

.. now pending upload.


Regards,

-- 
      ,''`.
     : :'  :     Chris Lamb
     `. `'`      lamby@debian.org 🍥 chris-lamb.co.uk
       `-

Message #29 received at 920701-close@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>

To: 920701-close@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Bug#920701: fixed in diffoscope 110

Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2019 16:49:27 +0000

Source: diffoscope
Source-Version: 110

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
diffoscope, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 920701@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org> (supplier of updated diffoscope package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Format: 1.8
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2019 17:33:09 +0100
Source: diffoscope
Binary: diffoscope
Architecture: source all
Version: 110
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Reproducible builds folks <reproducible-builds@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Changed-By: Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org>
Description:
 diffoscope - in-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories
Closes: 901982 920701
Changes:
 diffoscope (110) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   [ Chris Lamb ]
   * Don't look for adjacent -dbgsym package files automatically anymore to
     align better with default user expectations. The existing behaviour can be
     re-enabled by specifying the new `--use-dbgsym` flag. (Closes: #920701)
   * Don't crash with if we were unable to successfully extract a
     "guestfs"-based file. (Closes: #901982)
   * Avoid clumsy profiling title length calculations by moving to Markdown
     syntax, from reStructuredText.
   * Drop printing out dpkg-query output when running tests: it's rather noisy
     and has not helped yet in reproducing an error.
   * Re-enable gnumeric as a Build-Depends.
   * debian/rules: Use str.format over "+" for string concatenation.
 .
   [ Jelle van der Waa ]
   * comparators.wasm: Remove an unused "re" import. (MR: !18)
 .
   [ Mattia Rizzolo ]
   * comparators/elf: Apply flake8.
Checksums-Sha1:
 aee6af7f73e0a00d0f05f12d2e36f15df8d933d9 4450 diffoscope_110.dsc
 4a6a7585a24c596b588d413e01902a251388c080 9279224 diffoscope_110.tar.xz
 0ca54df42dfb09160fa7e512c7c4b4dad520e262 126648 diffoscope_110_all.deb
 8854b6cfbbb4f13e9471308cce32cba27815e566 21986 diffoscope_110_amd64.buildinfo
Checksums-Sha256:
 452a9a9496745f2d59d8188c35e4b4b0c974b513d45c9fd92036dccbc2211bb0 4450 diffoscope_110.dsc
 19f7ef5507c712ecf48326ac17abd46d8ed2a1de3ffa373f1e983f04edc3e1aa 9279224 diffoscope_110.tar.xz
 56dc447e4e9eef333f524854fa4e4e7105031ab6da0938ef16fd18f0e95a1df2 126648 diffoscope_110_all.deb
 1341ad9ae314fb5457f6554737834d7e10f2d783340e40e23669b0df0d9d05a4 21986 diffoscope_110_amd64.buildinfo
Files:
 6a34e603f60f896440c8f7d0e226092b 4450 devel optional diffoscope_110.dsc
 adcc63a5d2672027ed8b408e4cf95fde 9279224 devel optional diffoscope_110.tar.xz
 5056c6ff5bfa2d8449f1ec70318ce3d9 126648 devel optional diffoscope_110_all.deb
 25bb944db5150af9ea89f58afa7b5968 21986 devel optional diffoscope_110_amd64.buildinfo

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