Bug#766708: Processed: Re: Bug#766708: breaks multiarch cross building
On 22 November 2014 at 16:21, Ron <ron@debian.org> wrote:
>
> Dimitri wrote:
>> Thus multiarch cross tooling is not so relevant for fresh bootstraps,
>> and/or targeting non-debian architectures, or otherwise incomplete
>> systems (e.g. those that do not have compatible set of pre-compiled
>> binaries that use multiarch-paths
>
> I'll leave it to Helmut to talk about his existing work with bootstraps
> that's been stalled by reverting this patch.
>
> I can categorically say though that we are currently using a toolchain
> built this way on Jessie before it was broken by this change, both for
> embedded systems that do run Debian, and for microcontrollers that
> couldn't possibly run it (memory measured in kB, no MMU). It works
> just fine for all of those cases.
>
> The *only* problem we have at present is that we can no longer update
> the Jessie systems this was being done on, because our ability to do
> this was removed and there appears to be no actually working replacement
> for it.
>
The standard way to build cross toolchains, the same way as in current
stable release has worked and still works.
This is only about newly added, incomplete features, which
unfortunately are incomplete for jessie and have been sealed in the
packging to not expose them.
Since this is a source package, which is rebuild using out of the
archive infrastructure with out of the archive procedures there is
nothing in the archive that is broken thus imho this is out of scope
for a tech committee to rule.
Also since it is a source package change, rebuild outside the archive,
one is free to patch it, thankfully the source packaging is open
source which one can patch when rebuilding toolchains in the partially
new to jessie ways.
>
>> Can we all settle and move these developments to experimental
>> targeting for stretch, instead?
>
> Nobody is suggesting that other options can't be, or shouldn't be,
> explored for post-Jessie. Restoring the functionality that existed
> before this was removed will not in any way prevent or hinder that,
> it just means we won't repeat the sad state of Wheezy where this
> became no longer possible at all.
>
> Nothing you said here explains why we can't have the best of both
> worlds with this. If having this working for Jessie is "not so
> relevant" to you, that's fine - but it's very relevant to quite a
> few other people and was working for them until a few weeks ago
> when support for it was simply removed.
>
> We have people prepared to do the work to keep it working.
> What we don't have is an explanation of what it actually broke,
> if anything, to warrant removing it, without comment or warning,
> at this late stage of the Jessie release.
>
The newly introdued mualtiarch cross building in jessie to a few packages:
* cannot be build on standard debian buildds
* cannot build multilib toolchains
* and thus resulting toolchains cannot rebuild non-trivial & core
debian packages
These reasons have been pointed out to the people raising this bug
report before. If anyone missed that for any reason, it is pointed out
now.
These packages cannot be build on standard debian buildds, as it
requires for multiarch to be enabled and access available to foreign
arch packages. This is not currently available by default and does
lead to unpredictable builds at times (especially in sid - when
uninstallability on one arch will cause build dependencies /
dependencies to be resolved from the wrong arch where things are
installable).
The proposed multiarch-multiarch toolchain patches do not accomodate
to build multilib tool-chains, on which our distribution currently
relies to build many core libraries, bootloaders and etc. A solution
for cross-toolchains which excludes multilib support and no
commitments to implement that is not sufficient for Debian needs.
This bug report annoys me a lot, given the amount of inaccuracies it
has in portraying the current state of the affairs - that is
exaggerating the regression, when simply a desired feature by some,
failed pear-review was found feature incomplete and was not fully
included into jessie.
This bug and assertions made, are also taking away my free time that I
have to work on Debian. Thus instead of making progress on packaging
toolchain-base, I'm spent arguing here. Given a zero sum game rules,
is a net negative for all parties involved.
--
Regards,
Dimitri.
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