* Johannes Schauer <j.schauer@email.de>, 2013-01-15, 19:18:
Build profiles extend the Build-Depends format with a syntax similar to architecture restrictions but using < and > instead.Build-Depends: huge (>= 1.0) [i386 arm] <!embedded !stage1>, tiny
[...]
The drawback of this syntax is that Build-Dep parsing tools need to be updated to read/accept it, so uploads of source containing these annotations cannot be done until the dpkg in buildds at least parses it.
Not only dpkg, but also wanna-build, sbuild, lintian, dak, and who knows what else...
We've been historically very slow at adapting our software to these kind of changes:
1) Architecture wildcards were implemented in dpkg in January 2006. pbuilder added support for them in February... 2011.
2) Support for the :any qualifiers in Build-Depends was added to apt in February 2010, and to dpkg in March 2012; AFAIK it's still not supported by wanna-build.
-- Jakub Wilk