How do I resolve Debian packaging issue with ${python:Depends}?

Question

I am trying to build a python-based Debian package and I see the ${python:Depends} variable under the Depends section in the control file.

While installing, I see that it refers to the python-alembic package as a dependency, but I cannot understand how or where this variable gets populated.

Basically, I wanted to change the name here from python-alembic to alembic under the depends section coz I don't have the package with name python-alembic.

Answer 1

Most likely from dh_python2, which guesses dependencies based on the requires.txt file in egg_info. This file is created from install_requires in setup.py by distutils / setuptools.

You can disable reading requires.txt by putting:

override_dh_python2:
    dh_python2 --no-guessing-deps

in your debian/rules. Or you can help it by putting

alembic alembic

in debian/pydist-overrides (I think).