Re: Can we require build-arch/indep targets for lenny?

[Daniel Schepler <schepler@math.unipd.it>]

On Monday 18 June 2007 04:30:55 am Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to gather up some momentum for a policy change. Namely
> that the build-arch/indep targets in debian/rules become required
> instead of being optional.
>
> The reason for this is that dpkg-buildpackage can't reliable detect
> the existance of the build-arch/indep targets and must call 'build'
> instead. This forces every source to compile both architecture
> specific and architecture independent code on all buildds and
> increases the Build-Depends of packages a lot.

How about instead requiring something like: the build-arch target must return 
successfully or with a status of 2 (the standard make error status 
for "target not found"), and in the latter case the build target must return 
successfully.  That is, if Build-Depends but not necessarily 
Build-Depends-Indep are installed, the shell snippet

  debian/rules build-arch || (test $? -eq 2 && debian/rules build)

must work and exit with a status of 0.

This would make it possible for dpkg-buildpackage -B to be reliable while 
allowing most (or even all?) of the current packages to stay as they are 
until maintainers can add the recommended build-arch target.
-- 
Daniel Schepler