Bug#1125722: dpkg-gensymbols: error if symbols file is too lax

Hi!

On Fri, 2026-01-16 at 09:56:13 -0800, Otto Kekäläinen wrote:
> Package: dpkg-dev
> Version: 1.23.3
> Severity: wishlist

> I've come across several symbols files that use wildcards to match
> basically any symbol. Doesn't this make the symbols file kind of moot,
> as it will never detect any symbols that got removed and it will
> always match any symbols added?

No, this is intended to be used for well maintained libraries. See
the symver documentation in deb-src-symbols(5).

> Could dpkg-gensymbols start erroring if it encounters files like this,
> and fail the build to prevent such symbol files from getting into any
> release?

Given that this was implemented on purpose, not really no. But the
"*@..." syntax has been deprecated for a while, so I've instead added
a warning to prompt the maintainers to switch to use
"(symver|optional)@..." instead.

Thanks,
Guillem