I cannot parse the meaning of this sentence, please clarify:

"Consuming scripts of makepkg's internal print_all_package_names() passes a wrong package list. There is no debug package built with this setting."

I explain, the options set will not produce a debug package. However, if you call print_all_package_names(), it will print a pacman and a pacman-debug package supposedly built.
This confuses our CI/CD when transforming the PKGBUILD into it's yaml representation.

$ makepkg --packagelist
/var/cache/svnrepos/packages/pacman/trunk/pacman-5.2.1-4-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
/var/cache/svnrepos/packages/pacman/trunk/pacman-debug-5.2.1-4-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst


So, it is printing both pacman and pacman-debug packages will be created.

Now, if I try building it, I get:

[...]
==> Creating package "pacman-debug"...
-> Generating .PKGINFO file...
-> Generating .BUILDINFO file...
-> Generating .MTREE file...
-> Compressing package...
==> Leaving fakeroot environment.
==> Finished making: pacman 5.2.1-4 (Fri 10 Jan 2020 03:21:12 PM UTC)
==> Installing package pacman with pacman -U...
loading packages...
warning: pacman-5.2.1-4 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (2) pacman-5.2.1-4 pacman-debug-5.2.1-4

Please explain why you believe there isn't a debug package being created.

You are right, I just built it in chroot like the CI does, the debug package is now present. Need to investigate the makepkg.conf on server, sorry for the false alarm. someting is wrong on our end.
I just noticed that the repo-add failed because the debug package wasn't there.

The setting should really be overriding makepkg.conf, though.

In case you are wondering why archlinux builds a debug package specially for this PKGBUILD but doesn't release it, it can be provided on request for debugging purposes, we do this for a small handful of high-priority packages.

Thx, I also realized it has nothing to do with makepkg.conf.

It is however strange, if you are interested

This was build 5.2.1-1, debug package present
https://orion.artixlinux.org/job/packagesP/job/pacman/job/master/4/consoleText

This was the build 5.2.1-2, no debug package
https://orion.artixlinux.org/job/packagesP/job/pacman/job/master/6/consoleText

5.2.1-4, no debug
https://orion.artixlinux.org/job/packagesP/job/pacman/job/master/7/consoleText

Nothing has changed on our server.

Are you sure debug and stip need to be set?

the default makepkg.conf is OPTIONS=(strip docs !libtool !staticlibs emptydirs zipman purge !debug)

Is this the strip tidy patch eventually?

Those jenkins links require me to sign in before I can view them, so no idea.

But I'm willing to bet that the builds which were missing debug packages, occurred due to being built with a broken version of makepkg.

You need to build makepkg with file 5.38 inside the build chroot, or else you will run into  FS#65100  and  FS#58626 

Interesting, thx.

file-5.38 was built Jan 9, 2020 4:49:17 PM
pacman 5.2.1-2 was built Jan 9, 2020 5:23:40 PM against file-3.38
pacman 5.2.1-4 on Jan 10, 2020 10:43:54 AM

I have the suspicion the current 5.2.1-4 in our testing works.

Maybe I should update the pacman on the server... probably does the trick.

pacman 5.2.1-4 in a build chroot is the first version of pacman that will successfully strip packages in a build chroot that contains file 5.38.

Try using it to rebuild pacman again (pkgrel=4.1 or pkgrel=5) and it should work. Make sure the package is stripped, and that the file /usr/share/makepkg/source/file.sh contains the line:

local file_type=$(file -S -bizL -- "$file")

and NOT

local file_type=$(file -bizL -- "$file")

My theory is atm that I have to update the pacman on the server from 5.2.1-1 to rel 4, because pkg2yaml script is run outside the chroot to read PKGBUILD into yaml object.

Will report back, a bump is always possible, we use rel=x.y if we bump outside arch anyway. ;)

The update should have done the trick, pacman 5.2.1-4 on my local system has

local file_type=$(file -S -bizL -- "$file")

and produces the debug package, but doesn't with 5.2.1-1(file-5.37).

I hit the rebuild before I move pacman in stable to have the debug package, and it indeed present now.

Thx for your help.