Re: upstream advise page about circular dependencies (bootstrapping)
+++ Simon McVittie [2013-02-12 16:58 +0000]:
> Either GLib or pkg-config should document how you can avoid this cycle
> by doing a "stage 1" build of one project or the other. pkg-config used
> to have an embedded subset of GLib which it could use instead of the
> system copy to break this cycle, but I think the recommended way these
> days is GLib without pkg-config, which you can do by turning the
> information that pkg-config would have given you into configure
> arguments, something like this:
>
> ./configure \
> PKG_CONFIG=false \
> ZLIB_CFLAGS=-I/usr/include ZLIB_LIBS="-L/usr/lib -lz" \
> LIBFFI_CFLAGS=-I/usr/include LIBFFI_LIBS="-L/usr/lib -lffi" \
> --disable-libelf \
> --with-pcre=internal
>
> There is a tension here between the way we want to build high-quality
> packages for the real distribution (no embedded code copies, no
> duplication, full functionality, regression tests) and the ability to
> build them without dependency cycles (which often implies reduced
> functionality or testing, or an embedded code copy).
Exactly. Many of the things that make cross-building and cycle-removal
difficult are good computer science/software practice.
> There's a good reason why the /DebianBootstrap effort is based on doing
> "stage 1" builds with just enough functionality to break the cycle,
> rather than on eliminating cycles altogether.
>
> I think the advice to upstreams should be "keep it *possible* to build
> your software without cycles (perhaps with degraded functionality), and
> document how".
>
> > libdbus-glib-1-dev -> src:dbus
> > python-dbus -> src:dbus
>
> Both are easily broken by building src:dbus with reduced test coverage
> and reduced features, currently documented via comments in
> debian/control. I plan to upload a version to experimental that supports
> "stage1" builds, as soon as the current bootstrapping proposals solidify
> far enough that that's possible.
There is a patch for the necessary Build-profile foo here:
http://people.debian.org/~wookey/bootstrap/patches/
I'm collecting the set needed there for a basic build-chroot bootstrap
there until we are in a position to upstream this stuff in Debian or
Ubuntu (I.e the spec and tools support is nailed down and Debian is
unfrozen for such things)
Wookey
--
Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM
http://wookware.org/
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