[Linux-gpib-general] Debian packages, some comments and patches

[Matthias G. <m_g...@wi...>]

Hi all,

I am glad to announce the userspace parts of linux-gpib are now 
available in Debian unstable [0].
It provides the C library, the python bindings, the userspace tools and 
the documentation.
Once those migrated to testing (in three days) I will backport the 
package to trixie (current Debian stable).
I won't be packaging the kernel parts as those are in staging anyway; am 
hoping to enable those once they are in mainline.
Currently, the user tools mention in the README.Debian that the DKMS 
module is still needed.

To comply with Debian policy (no prebuilt/pregenerated files) I had to 
jump through some hoops. The whole process is documented in 
README.source [1]
It would be great if future release tarballs would match the pristine 
git tree for the corresponding tag; this would really ease future 
package updates.

Another thing I ran into when building the manpages is Debian shipping 
the xml stylesheet under a different directory, and providing osg2xml as 
/usr/bin/osx.
This resulted in the following patch [2]

For the python bindings I opted to version them separately form the GPIB 
version [3]. I did this since setuptools.py also mentions 1.0 as 
version; furthermore this allows
for an easier split should the bindings be maintained separately at some 
point. Regarding this, I commited a version using pyproject.toml, and 
cleaned up the code to the
best of my abilities. The last four commits might be of interest here; 
they fix the indentation for all python files and take care of some 
other minor warnings [4]
IMO the python binding should be split from the source tree to allow 
building with pyproject.toml; should you choose to switch to that, my 
fork has all the bits ready.
If a standalone setuptools build gets deprecated in Debian I will use my 
fork and provide the bindings from there (from a separate package).

Additionally, for some reason the Changelog is not present in git from 
4.3.7; this causes a build failure when trying to build from git since 
the makefile expects the Changelog to
be present. To mitigate this, I touched an empty one; however this 
should be fixed properly [5].

The last issue I ran into is hardening. Debian recommends that we set 
the following hardening flags [6]:
CFLAGS=-g -O2 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -mno-omit-leaf-frame-pointer 
-flto=auto -ffat-lto-objects -fstack-protector-strong 
-fstack-clash-protection -Wformat -Werror=format-security -fcf-protection
hardening features: bindnow=no branch=yes format=yes fortify=yes pie=yes 
relro=yes stackclash=yes stackprotector=yes stackprotectorstrong=yes

Exported for make:

export LDFLAGS += -pie -Wl,-z,relro
export CFLAGS := -g -O2 -fno-omit-frame-pointer 
-mno-omit-leaf-frame-pointer  -flto=auto -ffat-lto-objects 
-fstack-protector-strong -fstack-clash-protection -Wformat 
-Werror=format-security -fcf-protection
CFLAGS += -fPIE -fstack-clash-protection -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2

Since configure.ac overrides the exports I have set those aren't 
included in the build. It would be great if those could be included.


[0] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/linux-gpib-user
[1] 
https://sources.debian.org/src/linux-gpib-user/4.3.7-2/debian/README.source
[2] 
https://sources.debian.org/src/linux-gpib-user/4.3.7-2/debian/patches/fix-docbook-path.diff
[3] https://sources.debian.org/src/linux-gpib-user/4.3.7-2/debian/rules#L7
[4] https://codeberg.org/werdahias/python-gpib
[5] https://sources.debian.org/src/linux-gpib-user/4.3.7-2/debian/rules#L26
[6] https://wiki.debian.org/Hardening

-- 
Freundliche Grüsse / Best regards

Matthias Geiger
__________________________________________________________________
Matthias Geiger
Werkstudent
Forschung & Entwicklung/Research & Development

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