/var/lib/dpkg/available missing when building Debian Buster rootfs (dpkg error)

[mxvisor]

When building an image based on Debian Buster the rootfs installation fails with dpkg because /var/lib/dpkg/available is missing.
Log output:

...
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  localepurge*
dpkg: error: failed to open package info file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' for reading: No such file or directory
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
E: Sub-process dpkg --set-selections returned an error code (2)
E: Couldn't record the approved state changes as dpkg selection states
WARNING: exit code 100 from a shell command.
...
ERROR: Task ... do_rootfs_install) failed with exit code '1'
...

isar-mmdebstrap.inc tries to work around this by adding an mmdebstrap hook.
Current (non-working) code:

DPKG_HOOKS ?= "${@'--hook-dir='+d.getVar('MM_HOOK_JESSIE') \
              if os.path.isdir(d.getVar('MM_HOOK_JESSIE')) \
              else '--customize-hook=\'touch /var/lib/dpkg/available\''}"

The hook uses touch /var/lib/dpkg/available, but it runs on the host rather than inside the mmdebstrap rootfs.
The proposed fix is to use the hook parameter $1 (the mmdebstrap rootfs path) when creating the file:

DPKG_HOOKS ?= "${@'--hook-dir='+d.getVar('MM_HOOK_JESSIE') \
              if os.path.isdir(d.getVar('MM_HOOK_JESSIE')) \
              else '--customize-hook=\'touch $1/var/lib/dpkg/available\''}"

[ismagulb]

Hello mxvisor,
would you like to send a patch to isar-users@googlegroups.com?