ncurses/i386 autopkgtest failure

[Bryce Harrington]

The i386 autopkgtests for ncurses are failing in oracular due to build dependency confusions.

https://autopkgtest.ubuntu.com/results/autopkgtest-oracular/oracular/i386/n/ncurses/20240526_110804_4d872@/log.gz

It looks like this same sort of issue occurred in noble (LP: #2052951), and was addressed by simply disabling the manpage-references subtest for i386. It looks like ncurses 6.5-2 was sync'd in instead of merging with the delta, thus dropping the workaround.

However, the log of this failure differs a bit from the prior issue, in that all of the subtests are failing, and the error messages are a bit different:

267s autopkgtest [11:07:52]: test infocmp-dumb: preparing testbed
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: Failed to resolve build-deps for /tmp/autopkgtest.lKQ95H/3-autopkgtest-satdep.dsc; apt-get --simulate output:
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | Note, using file '/tmp/autopkgtest.lKQ95H/3-autopkgtest-satdep.dsc' to get the build dependencies
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | Reading package lists...
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | Building dependency tree...
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | Reading state information...
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | or been moved out of Incoming.
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | The following information may help to resolve the situation:
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: |
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | The following packages have unmet dependencies:
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | ncurses-bin : Conflicts: ncurses-bin:i386
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | ncurses-bin:i386 : Conflicts: ncurses-bin
268s autopkgtest [11:07:53]: ERROR: | E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

One option might be to do as in LP: #2052951, and disable all subtests for i386, but I wonder if there are better options to consider that would allow the testsuite to run? I'm not sure I understand precisely what is causing the i386/amd64 confusion, but perhaps this is a known situation with an established way to fix it?

If not, would it make sense to do some hackery like:

# debian/tests/control
Tests: manpage-references
Restrictions: superficial
Depends: libncurses-dev, ncurses-bin, ncurses-doc
Architecture: !i386

Tests: backspace-delete-keys, infocmp-dumb
Restrictions: superficial
Depends: ncurses-base, ncurses-bin
Architecture: !i386

Tests: manpage-references
Restrictions: superficial
Depends: libncurses-dev:i386, ncurses-bin:i386, ncurses-doc
Architecture: i386

Tests: backspace-delete-keys, infocmp-dumb
Restrictions: superficial
Depends: ncurses-base:i386, ncurses-bin:i386
Architecture: i386

Hopefully there's a better idea than this...?

[Shengjing Zhu (zhsj)]

ncurses-bin is in base image, and is installed as ncurses-bin:amd64 in the autopkgtest i386 image. There is no way to replace that. So IMO we don't have infra to test ncurses-bin:i386. And all the autopkgtests in ncurses need ncurses-bin.

I think we should ask release team to hint ncurses on i386 to force migration. (not make sense to carry a delta just skipping the entire test)

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

I tend to agree with zhjs; even if we could force it, cross-grading ncurses-bin could get hairy.

[Graham Inggs (ginggs)]

There are two new superficial tests that are not installable on i386.
Regressions in the ncurses library itself should be caught in the autopkgtests of its reverse-dependencies.

force-badtest hint added:
https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-release/britney/+git/hints-ubuntu/commit/?id=03076b211918d0d81c9c59230a60891d7977b2c0