Re: Bug#1061468: gloo: attempts to build on unsupported 32 bit systems

[Christian Kastner <ckk@debian.org>]

Hi Petter,

On 2024-01-25 07:27, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Dan Bungert]
> As far as I can see, the disadvantage of trying to build on
> non-supported architectures is a few wasted CPU cycles, while the
> advantage is less human time spent on package maintenance.
my experience is exactly the opposite.

Once the package does build successfully on an (per upstream)
unsupported architecture, every future failure to build is RC. And
remember: successful build != successful test; test suites can be
skipped or outright missing.

This then blocks migrations for the actually supported architectures.
This then means that I have to file a removal bug, and ftp-master gets
extra work.

And the 32-bit issue is usually one of those things where (1) upstream's
"it can't work" is usually right and (2) for some software, like machine
learning libraries, there are hardly any users anyway.


For me, as a maintainer, it's far simpler to just set Architecture as
per upstream. Yeah, this means work when new architectures are added,
but those are very very rare events.

Or better: follow Paul's advice (thanks Paul, I wasn't aware of
architecture-properties).

Best,
Christian