Re: when can a package be made architecture-dependent?

["Steven G. Johnson" <stevenj@ab-initio.mit.edu>]

On 18 Jan 2003, Adam DiCarlo wrote:
> But I do think this goes too far. There might be good reasons why the
> upstream maintainers or debian maintainers are unable to maintain a
> ported package -- notably, if the upstream were not willing to take
> patches for building in other architectures.

In which case the build will fail on those architectures, but as was
pointed out earlier this will not keep the package out of testing/stable
if the package never built on those architectures, so what's the problem?

Labelling it correctly will make it easier to identify which packages
could use porting, keep people aware of build bugs, prod the packagers to
make at least a minimal effort at maintaining portability, etc., and
thereby make the porters' job easier.

But I'll leave this for the Debian policy wonks to debate.

Cordially,
Steven G. Johnson