Build failure: cp: cannot stat 'FAQ'

[Niklas Holm]

I'm trying to build the latest (bionic) package from source using backportpackage on trusty. This is my command line:

   backportpackage --workdir . --build --dont-sign --source bionic tmux

This build fails with the following messages in the end:

...
make[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/buildd/tmux-2.6'
   dh_installdocs -O--parallel
cp: cannot stat 'FAQ': No such file or directory
dh_installdocs: cp -a FAQ debian/tmux/usr/share/doc/tmux returned exit code 1
make: *** [binary] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: fakeroot debian/rules binary gave error exit status 2
E: Failed autobuilding of package
I: unmounting dev/pts filesystem
I: unmounting run/shm filesystem
I: unmounting proc filesystem
I: cleaning the build env
I: removing directory /var/cache/pbuilder/build//1471 and its subdirectories
backportpackage: Error: Failed to build tmux_2.6-1~ubuntu14.04.1.dsc from source with pbuilder.

I guess it has to do with the FAQ being removed from the upstream repository with version 2.6.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Hi,
actually even on the bionic build this is missing.
See [1] throwing:
   dh_installdocs -O--parallel
   dh_installdocs: Cannot find (any matches for) "FAQ" (tried in .)

So I'd assume that the new debhelper is more tolerant about that but it would be nice to fix in newer releases just as much.
It just seems non fatal with newer debhelper and compat level.

For you I'd say just drop FAQ from debian/docs:1:FAQ

This is not so much a bug in Ubuntu - neither tmux nor debhelper so I set the bug to incomplete.
If you think it is please explain and set it back to new.
I hope the explanation helps.

[1]: https://launchpadlibrarian.net/343997307/buildlog_ubuntu-bionic-amd64.tmux_2.6-1_BUILDING.txt.gz

[Niklas Holm (niklas-holm)]

Problem with that is that backportpackage doesn't allow modifying the source before it's being built, so your suggestion doesn't work in my case. So I'll argue that this a bug in the debian/ubuntu packaging since FAQ is removed from upstream and debian/docs still reference it.

Why don't you just drop FAQ from debian/docs?

[Andreas Hasenack (ahasenack)]

This was fixed in debian:
tmux (2.6-2) unstable; urgency=medium

  * debian/docs: Remove FAQ, no longer shipped upstream (closes: #883117).
  * Bump Standards-Version to 4.1.2.

 -- Romain Francoise <email address hidden> Sun, 31 Dec 2017 13:38:35 +0100

And Ubuntu adopted that in bionic, where we ship 2.6-3.

In fact, I just tried "backportpackage --workdir . --build --dont-sign --source bionic tmux" in a trusty VM and it worked and I got a deb, so I'm closing this bug.