Comment 17 for bug 674146

Colin, I confirmed that the debootstrap change fixed debootstrap on armel; without the change, debootstrap still fails. So dpkg is running similar consistency checks as dpkg-query -l.

The debootstrap output is:
I: Installing core packages...
W: Failure trying to run: dpkg --force-depends --install /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_5.0.0ubuntu25_armel.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/base-passwd_3.5.22_armel.deb

Checking debootstrap.log I only see:
qemu: uncaught target signal 11 (Segmentation fault) - core dumped
Segmentation fault

Running dpkg --force-depends --install /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_5.0.0ubuntu25_armel.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/base-passwd_3.5.22_armel.deb in the chroot reproduces the problem.
Only adding Maintainer or Description was not enough to allow this dpkg -i to succeed.

Are you saying that you don't mind triggering the warnings in dpkg because dpkg has strictly enough data to complete? I guess that's fair as the warning is not user-visible; I personally prefer matching the interface as well as possible and avoiding warnings were I can to avoid clutter while debugging, but it's also sensible to keep debootstrap as minimal as possible.

We should keep the change until dpkg is fixed though.

Would you close the Debian bug with the debootstrap change with your rationale so that Debian folks read it directly from you?