Re: substvar in Arch:

[Sven LUTHER <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>]

On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 04:42:48AM +0200, Goswin Brederlow wrote:
> Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> writes:
> 
> > Hi mentors,
> >   is possible to have an Arch: field defined by a substvar?
> > 
> > Our problem (with our = debian ocaml maintainers) is that ocaml native
> > code compiler isn't available for all architectures supported by debian,
> > and, even if we have a bytecode compiler available everywhere, we can
> > want to have a package built only on architectures which ship a native
> > code compiler.
> > 
> > We like to avoid listing in the Arch field all the architectures
> > supporting a native code compiler, so we are thinking as something like
> > a substvar which define the Arch field gathering information from a file
> > present on the filesystem (maybe shipped along with the ocaml or
> > ocaml-base package).
> > 
> > Is this kind of solution feasible?
> 
> I asked on #debian-devel (IRC) and was told that a Build-depend on
> ocaml-nativ-ompiler is the way to go. The package would then be build
> on all archs having the compiler and fail on others. This should not
> prevent the package from going into testing or stable as long as no
> previous package exists for one of the failing archs.

Mmm, but what if there is a bug found in ocaml's native code compiler,
that forces me to disable one of the architectures, like i did for ia64
and powerpc, where the 3.04 native code compiler was broken, then there
suddenly is a previous version of the ia64 and powerpc packages to
contend with.

But then, in the case of the bug above, the native code compiler would
not have compiled from the start anyway.

Friendly,

Sven Luther