Re: Build-Depends-Indep, please review

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Roger Leigh <rleigh@codelibre.net> writes:

> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 04:40:57PM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>> David Kalnischkies <kalnischkies@gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>> > On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 19:25, أحÙ?د اÙ?Ù?Ø­Ù?Ù?دÙ? <aelmahmoudy@sabily.org> wrote:
>> >> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 07:07:07PM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>> >>> And as discussed before policy disagrees with reality in this.
>> >>
>> >> Would you please elaborate ?
>> >
>> > Goswin likely refers to this thread: Buildd & binary-indep
>> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/09/msg00590.html
>> > Message-id: <20100924204433.GA4714@apache.rbscorp.ru>
>> >
>> >
>> > Best regards
>> >
>> > David Kalnischkies
>> 
>> And in short:
>> 
>> Buildds install only Build-Depends but not Build-Depends-Indep but still
>> call the "build" target. In reality the "build" target must work with
>> only Build-Depends installed contrary to what policy says.
>
> I do hope this mess can be sorted out after squeeze is released.
> Mandating build-arch and build-indep would be a good thing, IMHO.
> It's not the buildd software that can change this though--the
> actual sticking point is dpkg-buildpackage, which is used by sbuild.
>
> sbuild is actually perfectly capable of installing Build-Depends-Indep
> and removing Build-Conflicts-Indep when invoked with the -A (build
> arch-all) option, but there are no buildds building arch-indep packages
> yet.  If we ever throw away uploaded binaries and build everything on
> buildds, this would then be useful.
>
>
> Regards,
> Roger

Don't count on it. This has been going on for years and years.

The simple solution is to just declare the build-indep/arch targets
required (maybe going via SHOULD to MUST) and then have
dpkg-buildpackage just use them when sources have changed (or just use
them and break things).

Unfortunately this would make a lot of packages instantly RC buggy so
people are afraid of doing that. And without mandating the targets and
making Build-Depends-Indep actually usefull there is no incentive for
maintainers to change the source.

But hey, all the maintainer has to do is add 1, in words ONE, char to
debian/rules. Just change "build:" to "build%:" and dpkg-buildpackage
could use build-arch/indep targets instead of build. Aparently that is
too much to ask.

MfG
        Goswin