pkg kde talk - Sep 2011 - troubles with symbols files on a Qt extension library

Hello Qt/Kde maintainers,

I maintain the LibQxt package which is a Qt extension library. LibQxt
source package provides multiple binary packages (core and modules).
I want to improve the package quality using symbols files but I have
some troubles and I need some help.

I used pkg-kde-tools to create symbols files for each core and modules
of LibQxt. I followed the pkg-kde.alioth documentation page [1].
After that, I built the package without any errors. But when the package
was uploaded and built on other architectures the build fail because of
differences between symbols files :

dpkg-gensymbols: warning: some new symbols appeared in the symbols file:
see diff output below
dpkg-gensymbols: warning: some symbols or patterns disappeared in the
symbols file: see diff output below
dpkg-gensymbols: warning: debian/libqxt-core0/DEBIAN/symbols doesn''t
match completely debian/libqxt-core0.symbols
[ ...diff below...]

So, I used this command to patch each libraries components :

pkgkde-symbolshelper batchpatch -v 1.8 buildlog

I repeated this for each architectures and I obtained symbols files
which was "confirmed" for all architectures.

After a new upload, the build process on some architectures failed again
cause of new differences! (see all build logs here [2])
I also remark that some builds failed for the same reasons if I build on
stable instead of unstable repository.

Finally, I don''t know why the symbols are different according to
architectures and repositories. Maybe I simply can''t use symbol files
with this library! Maybe someone have an idea about this situation?

Thanks for your help.

Best regards,
Thomas Pierson

--
[2] Builds logs for the two last uploads :
* https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=libqxt
* http://buildd.debian-ports.org/status/package.php?p=libqxt

[1] http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/symbolfiles.html

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Hello,

Thomas PIERSON <web.pierson at gmail.com>
> [snip]
> 
> Finally, I don''t know why the symbols are different according to
> architectures and repositories. Maybe I simply can''t use symbol
files
> with this library! Maybe someone have an idea about this situation?
>
> [snip]
Of course you can use symbol files with your library. Having slightly different 
sets of symbols for different architectures is absolutely normal, so get used 
to it. 

Having different symbols for packages built against different distributions is 
quite normal as well; usually among the symbols in your *.symbols files are 
private/spurious symbols which may be different depending on various things, 
for instance the gcc version. So, when you create/update your symbols files, 
it''s better if you use a log produced by a compilation done in a clean
chroot
by pbuilder/sbuild/whatever (I recommend you sbuild because while it
isn''t
easy to use the first time, it behaves like the sbuild installed in the buildd 
infrastructure and it''s very powerful).

To avoid your build failures you must pass -c0 to dpkg-gensymbols, thus your 
package will build for all archs and you''ll get a build log for armel
which
you could use to update the *.symbols files.

> To avoid your build failures you must pass -c0 to dpkg-gensymbols,
> thus your package will build for all archs and you''ll get a build
log
> for armel which you could use to update the *.symbols files.
Ok, I will do that.
Thanks a lot for your help!

Regards, Thomas.

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