Symlink installed in DESTDIR (sometimes?) not copied to package // Empty packages do not output .deb file

[Mihai Moldovan]

When building a source package -- https://code.launchpad.net/~x2go/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+build/7361822 -- on launchpad, the package nx-x11-common is not built at all.

This is probably the case because the package is empty (i.e., has no data files.)

However, the build log clearly includes this line:

ln -s -f "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu"/libNX_Xinerama.so.1 /build/buildd/nx-libs-3.5.0.32/debian/tmp/usr/lib/nx/X11/Xinerama/libXinerama.so.1

and nx-x11-common.install:

usr/lib/nx/X11/

The symlink should thus be copied by dh_install, making the package non-empty.

This is not the case on launchpad.

Building the same source package with pbuilder-dist does *not* show this problem. Instead, the package nx-x11-common is built successfully and includes the symlink.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

nx-x11-common is an Architecture: all package, so it's only built on a single architecture. On Launchpad, for Ubuntu releases before 14.10 it's i386, and for 14.10 and later it's amd64. In this case, you can see that it was produced by the i386 build (https://launchpad.net/~x2go/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+build/7361823) and published on all architectures.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

(You can reproduce the scenario using pbuilder's --binary-arch option.)