Re: Introducing Build-Recommends / Build-Core-Depends?

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Andreas Barth wrote:
>* Colin Watson (cjwatson@debian.org) [110813 15:27]:
>> On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 01:28:36PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote:
>> > During bootstraping a new architecture, there are sometimes ugly
>> > build-dependency-loops (usually involving generating documentation
>> > for the core build utilities means you need to have the architecture
>> > already available; same with graphical tools). During DebConf, Wookey
>> > had a talk which lead to us discussing some ideas how to support that.
>> > Most packages are not affected at all by that, and current behaviour
>> > isn't changing as long as package source files are not changed.
>> 
>> Wookey's proposal was to have Build-Depends-Stage1 (etc. - I may have
>> misspelled this slightly), and for a bootstrap-aware autobuilder to
>> build its way through each of the stages until it reaches the real
>> Build-Depends.  I personally prefer this approach because it makes it
>> clearer that the final build-depends is what we really want to reach,
>> and that binaries uploaded to the real Debian archive still need to have
>> all those build-dependencies in place.
>
>Wookeys proposal is less generic and more centric to bootstrapping.
>Which has its advantages, and its disadvantages.
>
>I'm not saying that this proposal is better. It is different, and has
>a different set of advantages. Plusside is that it's more generic, so
>you could do more with debian/control fields, debhelper and cdbs, and
>less with specific additions to debian/rules. 
>
>Generic options are usually better IMHO, but well - YMMV.

Often, yes. But also often at extra cost. Where is the added benefit
here - i.e. what are the use cases? I'm 100% behind making the
bootstrap phase more simple, but I can't see many others...

Also, "Build-Recommends" is an atrocious name. :-)

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
"...In the UNIX world, people tend to interpret `non-technical user'
 as meaning someone who's only ever written one device driver." -- Daniel Pead