please sync steam-installer from Debian

[Simon McVittie]

The steam source package in Debian has been superseded by the steam-installer source package, which behaves more like Ubuntu's patched steam package. Please swap to tracking steam-installer for Ubuntu >= 23.04.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/steam-installer/1:1.0.0.78~ds-3

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

By the way, if you had used

requestsync -s steam-installer

from ubuntu-dev-tools, it would have automatically subscribed the ubuntu-sponsors team and this probably would have been handled quicker.

https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/requestsync

[Simon McVittie (smcv)]

> requestsync -s steam-installer from ubuntu-dev-tools

Sorry, I am not an Ubuntu developer and do not normally have Ubuntu-specific tools installed.

[Simon McVittie (smcv)]

This package will need to be added to the allowlist for building i386 packages, like the older src:steam was. In its current state, it will be uninstallable, because steam-installer:amd64 requires steam-libs-i386:i386.

[Simon McVittie (smcv)]

Adding this to the allowlist will make it take over all binary packages from src:steam.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

I can add this to the whitelist so it builds, but it still won't migrate out of -proposed without additional work because britney does not allow cross-arch dependencies for its installability checks. As far as I know Debian doesn't either. Has Debian done something to special-case steam-installer here?

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

(FWIW there is a FauxPackages file that can be used to tell britney to treat particular packages as existing - but the Debian version of this package doesn't appear to be committed to VCS...)

[Simon McVittie (smcv)]

> Has Debian done something to special-case steam-installer here?

I don't remember having had to ask the release team to force it through, but perhaps someone in the release team noticed it was necessary and did so.

Steam does legitimately require both amd64 and i386 libraries, and downstream distributions are not in a position to change that. The proprietary binaries that are downloaded by steam-installer are a mixture of word sizes, and it will not work correctly unless we have both word-sizes of glibc and graphics drivers.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

update_excuses now has:

Issues preventing migration:
steam-installer/amd64 has unsatisfiable dependency
steam/i386 has unsatisfiable dependency

The steam-installer/amd64 one is straightforward, simply adding steam-libs-i386/amd64 to FauxPackages as alluded above.

But why is the steam binary package Architecture: i386 instead of either amd64 or all, given that it has a single dependency on steam-installer:amd64?

[Simon McVittie (smcv)]

The old steam binary package in src:steam was historically Architecture: i386, because Steam for Linux was originally runnable on i386-only systems, and only later gained amd64 dependencies (while also keeping its i386 dependencies). steam:i386 has not *actually* been runnable on i386-only systems since at least 2021 and probably earlier, so it was a bug for it to be an i386 package (https://bugs.debian.org/992533).

The steam binary package in src:steam-launcher is a transitional package to help with upgrades. I didn't think apt would be able to figure out that it's OK to crossgrade from the old steam:i386 (<= 1:1.0.0.75-1), from src:steam, to the new steam:i386 (>= 1:1.0.0.75+ds), from src:steam-launcher? If it can't, then that would defeat the purpose of having a transitional package.

[Simon McVittie (smcv)]

> I didn't think apt would be able to figure out that it's OK to crossgrade from the old steam:i386 (<= 1:1.0.0.75-1), from src:steam, to the new steam:i386 (>= 1:1.0.0.75+ds), from src:steam-launcher?

Sorry, of course that should say: the new steam:amd64 (>= 1:1.0.0.75+ds) or steam:all (>= 1:1.0.0.75+ds) that you are suggesting.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

> I didn't think apt would be able to figure out that it's OK to crossgrade

You're right; did a minimal test here and indeed it does not. Which makes sense but it was worth a try.

Anyway, I've added steam-libs-i386:amd64 to FauxPackages and it doesn't seem to have done the job.

Package: steam-libs-i386
Version: ${unstable-version}
Architecture: amd64

But britney still reports:

Issues preventing migration:
steam-installer/amd64 has unsatisfiable dependency
steam/i386 has unsatisfiable dependency

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Ah, need to specify the source package name in order for this to be found. May be sorted now.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This has now migrated.