pbuilder create of a precise image fails on perl-modules / perl conflict

[Bryce Harrington]

pbuilder fails to create a precise builder image (has been failing this way for me for past week or two at least):

$ sudo DIST=precise ARCH=i386 pbuilder create --distribution precise
....
Reading package lists...
I: Obtaining the cached apt archive contents
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 perl : Depends: perl-modules (>= 5.14.2-5) but 5.12.4-6 is installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.
I: unmounting /var/cache/pbuilder/ccache filesystem
I: unmounting dev/pts filesystem
I: unmounting proc filesystem
I: cleaning the build env
I: removing directory /var/cache/pbuilder/build//11957 and its subdirectories

I gather that perl-modules is a binary package of the perl source package, so perhaps it is really a perl or apt issue, but am not certain at this point.

Detailed log attached.

pbuilder:
  Installed: 0.199+nmu1ubuntu1.1
  Candidate: 0.199+nmu1ubuntu1.1
  Version table:
 *** 0.199+nmu1ubuntu1.1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-updates/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.199+nmu1ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Full log with debugging output turned on.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Confirmed that pulling and installing debootstrap (1.0.38) onto my natty 'host' enabled it to correctly build precise images.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

debootstrap (1.0.38) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Joey Hess ]
  * Improve error message when a decompressor is not available,
    to indicate which package has been built with bzip today.
    Closes: #644719

  [ Otavio Salvador ]
  * Fix --print-debs support when using --foreign param. Closes:
    #551837.

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * pkgdetails_perl: Use the last of a sequence of stanzas for the same
    package name, rather than the first (closes: #649319).

 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:20:53 +0000

It may not be worth SRUing for this; it should go away naturally in a bit ...

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

(In particular I think it will go away before we'd have time to get this through the SRU process.)

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Ok, fair enough; feel free to close out the natty and oneiric tasks in this case.

Presumably anyone conversant enough with pbuilder to run into this problem can easily do what I did and snag the 1.0.38 .dsc and roll a fix locally, if they can find this bug report.