DH_VARNISHABI(1p)

💅 DH_VARNISHABI — the tea ☕

okay bestie, welcome to dh_varnishabi from the User Contributed Perl Documentation section of the manual (it's a 1p page, so she lives with the Perl gals 🎀). She's a little debhelper buddy whose whole job is calculating the Varnish ABI dependencies. Let's get into it ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

dh_varnishabi — calculate the Varnish ABI dependencies 💖

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dh_varnishabi [debhelper options] [--strict] [--force]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So dh_varnishabi is a debhelper program, and what she does is add the appropriate varnishabi-* dependencies onto packages that build varnish modules. Simple, iconic, lowkey essential. 👑

By default? She adds a varnishabi-* entry to misc:Depends, so that any package holding modules that get loaded by Varnish depends on an appropriate version of the varnish package. no cap, that's the whole point. 🫶

If you pass --strict, then she also adds a dependency on varnishabi-strict-*. extra. thorough. we love her for it. 💅

When you're building the varnish binary package, she flips the script and generates misc:Provides entries instead — for both varnishabi-* and varnishabi-strict-*. queen behavior.

Now here's the vibe check on when she actually does anything: substvars entries are only added if a Varnish module is detected in the build products — unless --force is specified. And how does she detect modules, you ask? She goes searching through a package's build products for libraries installed in the Varnish vmods directory, and checks whether they contain a symbol named vmod_version. detective era 🔍✨

Also!! Please note there's a dh addon named varnishabi that can automatically invoke dh_varnishabi for you. so you don't even have to lift a finger. iykyk. 🙈

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• --force — Do not even try to detect Varnish modules in the package. Just always assume a module is present. Which means misc:Depends will always be populated. no guessing, no searching, we're just committing. 💀

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🌈 NOTES 🌈

⚠️ Heads up bestie: this command is not idempotent. You should call dh_prep(1) between invocations of this command (with the same arguments, obvi). Otherwise you might end up with multiple instances of the same text being added to the substitution variables. and that's giving chaos, not cute. 😭

⚠️ Also, dh_varnishabi should be run before dh_gencontrol. The varnishabi sequence addon for dh does the right thing on its own — this note is only relevant when you're calling dh_varnishabi manually. main character energy = knowing where you belong in the order. 📋

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

• debhelper(7)

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Originally written by Chris Boot <bootc@debian.org> as dh_ppp(7), and then Marco d'Itri <md@linux.it> modified it for Varnish. legends only, fr fr. 🌟

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and that's the page, babe 🫶 this was written up in perl v5.40.1, dated 2026-02-10, and it's the DH_VARNISHABI(1p) page from User Contributed Perl Documentation. go forth and let dh_varnishabi handle your Varnish ABI deps, bestie — you got this 💖✨🌸