firefox package build has external side effects

[Simon Arlott]

Steps to reproduce:
1. Use "apt-get build-dep firefox" to obtain build dependencies
2. Use "apt-get sources firefox" to obtain the firefox package (firefox_29.0+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.2).
3. Run "dpkg-buildpackage -b -us -uc -j12" to build the package

During the build process the following python packages are installed to the default location ($HOME/py-bin and $HOME/py-lib):
compare-dirs
compare-locales
easy_install
pip

These packages depend on the virtualenv python interpreter located at firefox-29.0+build1/obj-x86_64-linux-gnu/_virtualenv/bin/python and do not work if the firefox package source is later deleted.

The build process for this package should be modified to prevent these external side effects by overriding the location of py-bin and py-lib to be within the source directory.

The build process itself always fails if "compare-locales" is not in the path before building (#1320004), but this can be resolved by installing it to a py-bin directory within the source directory at the start of the build process (instead of somewhere in the middle of it).

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Huh, I'm not sure what on earth you are doing, but clearly the build process doesn't always fail if compare-locales is not in the path before building, otherwise we wouldn't be able to build it in the archive and the various PPA's, every day. And it doesn't leave any files outside of the build directory here either.

You are doing something wrong or there's something wrong with your build environment

[Simon Arlott (sa.me.uk)]

The firefox build process is acting on the configuration in ~/.pydistutils.cfg (attached).