Subject: Bug#698618: net-retriever: should provide a way to replace debian-archive-keyring-udeb without forking the source package

From: Raphaël Hertzog <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:47:09 +0100

Package: net-retriever
Version: 1.32
Severity: wishlist

I have been working for a Debian derivative. The derivative has its own
archive key in foo-archive-keyring and foo-archive-keyring-udeb. We found
that having a separate package was cleaner rather than putting non-Debian
keys in a forked debian-archive-keyring.

The derivative also forks "debian-installer" to put his own artwork.
The installer images are thus rebuilt but they always embed the debian
keyring and not the derivative keyring. One doesn't find any meaningful
mention of debian-archive-keyring in the debian-installer package and
the keyring is only integrated due to net-retriever dependency on
debian-archive-keyring-udeb.

Thus we had to fork net-retriever just to replace the
"debian-archive-keyring-udeb" dependency with "foo-archive-keyring-udeb".

Maybe the dependency could be replaced with a virtual package
(archive-keyring-udeb) so that debian-installer's dependency resolution on
net-retriever could accept "foo-archive-keyring-udeb" that would be
injected sooner and that would provide foo-archive-keyring-udeb?

I don't know whether d-i would cope with a virtual dependency or if it
would need a real alternative first (i.e. "debian-archive-keyring-udeb |
archive-keyring-udeb").

Or maybe there are cleaner solutions but it would be nice to avoid the
need to fork net-retriever just for this.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.6-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

---

From: Cyril Brulebois <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:44:19 +0100

> need to fork net-retriever just for this.

Looking at a d-i Packages file, there are lots of Provides, some of
which are used in Depends. As for alternatives, we have only two:

$ grep '|' ftp.fr.debian.org_debian_dists_wheezy_main_debian-installer_binary-amd64_Packages
Depends: archdetect, cdebconf-udeb, kbd-udeb | kbdcontrol-udeb | hurd-udeb
Depends: cdebconf-udeb, dmidecode-udeb, localechooser, keyboard-setup, download-installer | load-cdrom

Probably too late for wheezy anyway.

Mraw,
KiBi.