Re: FTBFS for Archetecture all package (Bug#167049)

[Junichi Uekawa <dancer@netfort.gr.jp>]

> > If the bug in tetex is fixed, then the bug is closed.
> 
> TEX is migrating to the new file arrangement.  It is not a bug issue.
> I think it is a moving target problem.  I do not want to write a build
> dependence to be limited to the current version.
> 

There is the problem of scalability.

"Moving target" is a nice buzzword, but when someone makes changes
to something, one must consider the effects it will make to other
things.

There were many changes done to sgml and linuxdoc "toolchains"
in the last few years, and I think there are quite a few packages
which still do not build from source due to their change.

Latest bison change caused (probably) about 200 packages to fail
building from source, and I don't think they are that quickly fixed
either.

It must be really thoroughly thought over (is it really necessary to
break backwards compatibility?) and hopefully a upgrade path with
compatibility should be provided.


When all else fails, we'd like to fix the breakage before the 
next release.


It's not about the severity of my bugs that are the main 
problem. It's about the packages which made the changes and 
making other packages fail to build.

I'd rather like the respective maintainers to file bugs on 
the depending packages, rather than me checking the build failure 
the harder way, but anyway, not many maintainers do that now :(



regards,
	junichi