Recipe builds fail with bzr: ERROR: No module named apt_pkg

[Scott Ritchie]

As of today, with the new version of the recipe build system that supports {latest-tag}, my builds started failing with the error:

bzr: ERROR: No module named apt_pkg
You may need to install this Python library separately.

Example buildlog here: https://launchpadlibrarian.net/85208307/buildlog.txt.gz

This is probably due to a missing python-apt package on the build daemons.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

I think the dependency really ought to be in bzr-builder as that's most directly calling it.

See also bug 890892 which would have made this easier to understand.

So, really this is a python-debian bug, that it imports apt_pkg unconditionally, while only having a Recommends dependency on it. On the builds, installation of Recommends is turned off. That is still present in lucid, but fixed in oneiric.

It's probably easiest just to work around it by declaring the dependency in either launchpad-buildd or bzr-builder.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

I added a dependency to launchpad-buildd and it is building in <https://code.launchpad.net/~launchpad/+recipe/launchpad-buildd-daily> and then will be deployed.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

hloeung deployed this to a staging buildd and it apparently worked <https://code.staging.launchpad.net/~jelmer/+archive/ppa/+recipebuild/87828>; it will be rolled out more broadly soon.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

still waiting for deployment of the dependency addition, but I think python-apt has actually been deployed