On Sun, May 27, 2001 at 12:43:47AM -0400, Ben Collins wrote:
> But if I special case autoconf, then who knows what precedence that will
> set.
See, that would be what's known in the industry as FUD.
> Also, the case where the
> autobuilders will build things in a different environment than a normal
> user, or the maintainer would, is not acceptable. The autobuilders may
> be able to build it, but a normal user would have to know some secret
> (installing autoconf2.13) to get it to rebuild.
Shall I invite you to look at all the special casing in andrea? The buildds
already do things differently to how a normal user or the maintainer might
build them. That's not desirable, perhaps, but it's not reasonably avoidable
for woody.
> IMO, you should either accept the inconvenience and create an autoconf
> that is version 2.13, and an autoconf2.5 package. Or, do as you say, but
> file bugs on packages that require a dep on autoconf2.13. Do not ask for
> autobuilders to special case things. Just think of it as "the
> autobuilders are mindless machines that try to replicate exactly what
> the maintainer does" and not "smart machines that try to make up for
> lacking elsewhere".
If the autobuilder maintainers are mindless then we need to new autobuilder
maintainers.
I know you want to not have to put any thought into maintaining the
sparc buildd, and I know others don't want to have to put any thought
into being able to port Debian to a new architecture. I'm sorry, but
we're *not* there yet.
> You can't file a bug on the autobuilder for not
> special casing a crappy setup, so you'll be stuck anyway.
What can and will happen though is that the packages will be pulled from
arches they don't build on though.
Buildd admins need to take some responsibility for making packages work
on their port for woody, no matter how repulsed they are by whatever
hacks may be necessary.
Seriously: you've had nine months since potatos' freeze ended, and another
nine months before that since build-depends were put in policy, trying
to achieve that particular holy grail. It's been relatively successful,
but it's nowhere near complete, and wasting time during the freeze worrying
about it isn't going to do much more good.
It's time to stop worrying about it 'til next time and just get things
working.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``_Any_ increase in interface difficulty, in exchange for a benefit you
do not understand, cannot perceive, or don't care about, is too much.''
-- John S. Novak, III (The Humblest Man on the Net)
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