Re: draft ballot: please rule on how to implement debian/rules build-arch

[Carsten Hey <carsten@debian.org>]

* Steve Langasek [2011-07-23 15:45 +0200]:
> BTW, another option for the long-term solution which we haven't really
> addressed head-on is that dpkg-buildpackage could detect whether both
> arch-indep and arch-dep packages are present in debian/control, and use
> build-arch *only* when both are present.  This does not require either
> heuristic detection (the presence or absence of arch-indep/arch-dep packages
> is *definitional* of whether a separate build-arch rule is relevant, and
> dpkg-buildpackage already parses debian/control), or the use of redundant
> declarations (i.e, Build-Options).

An other option is to release a new Debian Policy version (maybe a major
one), including either the requirement for source packages with
arch-indep and arch-dep packages to provide build-arch (what you
described above), or require all packages to provide build-arch as
target; and during a transition period, let dpkg-buildpackage use the
Standards-Version of a package to decide whether the build-arch target
should be used.

Carsten