source build fails with USER: parameter not set

[Jason Noble]

$lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS
Release: 12.04

$ apt-cache policy php5
php5:
  Installed: 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.6
  Candidate: 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.6
  Version table:
 *** 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.6 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Expected result:
debuild produces the package files defined in debain/control

Actual result:
debuild fails and exits with status 2.

Steps to reproduce:

o Fresh install of ubuntu server 12.04 amd64
o apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
o apt-get build-dep php5
o apt-get install language-pack-de
o apt-get source php5
o cd php5-5.3.10
o debuild

Building the binaries succeeds, but fails during test-results.txt with the following lines:

# start our own mysql server for the tests
/bin/sh debian/setup-mysql.sh 2656 /home/jason/php5-test/php5-5.3.10/mysql_db
debian/setup-mysql.sh: 44: debian/setup-mysql.sh: USER: parameter not set
make: *** [test-results.txt] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules build gave error exit status 2

The full build log is attached.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

I have reproduced this in Precise. Note that I had to install devscripts to make your reproduction steps work. But I can't reproduce this in Raring.

However, I can successfully build php5 in Precise using sbuild (with --resolve-alternatives). Presumably the buildds can build it too. So I'm not sure that this is a bug.

It does seem wrong to me that debian/rules says:
        $(SHELL) debian/setup-mysql.sh $(MYSQL_PORT) $(MYSQL_DATA_DIR)
but debian/setup-mysql.sh has a shebang of #!/bin/sh. So what if the user's shell is bash? This is the case in Raring (5.4.9-4ubuntu2) too.

Setting Importance to Medium as a workaround (sbuild) is available. I'm still not sure whether this is a valid bug though, since I'm not sure what the expectations are for the buildability of packages outside of buildds.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

PS. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/BuildEnvironment for help using sbuild.