diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index af91b51f56..76760a314e 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@ git-annex (5.20140222) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium
     messages about corrupt pack files.
   * Add build dep on regex-compat to fix build on mipsel, which lacks
     regex-tdfa.
+  * Disable test suite on sparc, which is missing optparse-applicative.
 
  -- Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>  Fri, 21 Feb 2014 13:03:04 -0400
 
diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
index bcb51d9357..46540219aa 100644
--- a/debian/control
+++ b/debian/control
@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ Build-Depends:
 	libghc-tasty-hunit-dev [!mipsel !sparc],
 	libghc-tasty-quickcheck-dev [!mipsel !sparc],
 	libghc-tasty-rerun-dev [!mipsel !sparc],
-	libghc-optparse-applicative-dev,
+	libghc-optparse-applicative-dev [!sparc],
 	lsof [!kfreebsd-i386 !kfreebsd-amd64],
 	ikiwiki,
 	perlmagick,