Re: [PATCH] binutils: enable s390x/ppc64el on arm64 hosts

[Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de>]

Hi Alex,

On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 09:05:33PM +0000, Alex Bennée wrote:
> Currently:
> 
>   apt-get build-dep qemu
> 
> Is broken on arm64,

Actually, that's fairly normal. You'll find that quite a number of
packages fail to satisfy their Build-Depends something other than amd64.
That's due to the fact that Debian currently builds all
architecture-independent packages on amd64 only (unless maintainers do
binary uploads, which is kinda discouraged for non-NEW).

> that's a fairly serious failure because it means you
> can't rebuild QEMU binaries. I'm not sure how the buildd daemons deal with
> that? Unless there is another documented way of bringing in build
> dependencies.

As such, it certainly is not a serious failure. The build daemons
separate architecture-dependent packages from architecture-independent
ones. If you "apt-get build-dep --arch-only qemu" on arm64 and that
fails, then yes that could be serious.

For more background on this matter, I recommend the rather longer thread
on the open policy bug about adding Build-Indep-Architecture (#846970).
That field is supposed to document which architecture you can build
architecture-independent packages on. This may sound backwards
initially, but you'll encounter a number of affected packages and the
field is supposed to at least document the status quo.

Please stop it and close #921458.

Helmut