Pkg xen devel - May 2023 - Bug#1036601: xenstore-utils: missing Depends: xen-utils-common

Package: xenstore-utils
Version: 4.17.0+74-g3eac216e6e-1
Severity: serious
User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
Usertags: piuparts

Hi,

during a test with piuparts I noticed your package ships (or creates)
a broken symlink:

0m15.9s ERROR: FAIL: Broken symlinks:
  /usr/bin/xenstore-control -> ../lib/xen-common/bin/xen-utils-wrapper
(xenstore-utils)


cheers,

Andreas

Control: retitle -1 xenstore-utils: broken symlink /usr/bin/xenstore-control

This is a bit more complicated:

Up to bullseye the binaries in the xenstore-utils package were independent of 
the running xen version (as the xenstore interface is more or less supposed to 
be stable).

Starting with bookworm the xenstore-control binary is now linked against 
unstable xen api libraries (libxenguest.so and libxenctrl.so) which are 
included in the libxenmisc4.17 package.
The upstream commit for this change is [1] and the documentation also says 
that the control command interface is not xen version independent.

Because of the additional shared library dependencies our shuffle-binaries 
script [3] kicks in and sets up the xen-utils-wrapper for xenstore-control.

The xen-utils-wrapper is only included in the xen-utils-common package. But 
adding that dependency would not be enough. It would make the /usr/bin/
xenstore-control symlink not broken, but the wrapper would not find the real 
binary, as it is included in the xen-utils-4.17 package at the /usr/lib/
xen-4.17/bin/xenstore-control path.

Installing only xenstore-utils and xen-utils-common in a dom-U gives the 
following output when executing xenstore-control:
$ xenstore-control 
ERROR:  Can't find version 4.17 of xen utils (maybe xen-utils-4.17 was
already removed before rebooting out of Xen 4.17), bailing out!


Some options I see for fixing this:

[a] make xenstore-utils depend on xen-utils-V
[b] move the /usr/bin/xenstore-control symlink to xen-utils-V
[c] split the xenstore-utils package in a xen version independent and xen 
version dependent package.

Disadvantage from [a] is that xenstore-utils can also be used inside a dom-U 
and would pull lots of unused stuff. [c] seems to be a bit overkill for only 
one binary file, so I currently see [b] as the best option.

So does anybody have any opinion, ideas or something else to say about all 
this? Or any better ideas?


[1]
https://salsa.debian.org/xen-team/debian-xen/-/commit/7f97193e6aa858df03be501440e0ade8cceb9ec5
[2]
https://salsa.debian.org/xen-team/debian-xen/-/blob/master/docs/misc/xenstore.txt#L378
[3]
https://salsa.debian.org/xen-team/debian-xen/-/blob/master/debian/shuffle-binaries
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Processing control commands:
> retitle -1 xenstore-utils: broken symlink /usr/bin/xenstore-control
Bug #1036601 [xenstore-utils] xenstore-utils: missing Depends: xen-utils-common
Changed Bug title to 'xenstore-utils: broken symlink
/usr/bin/xenstore-control' from 'xenstore-utils: missing Depends:
xen-utils-common'.

-- 
1036601: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1036601
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Contact owner at bugs.debian.org with problems