Re: Building Debian Completely From Source
Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> writes:
> Roger Leigh <roger@whinlatter.uklinux.net> writes:
>
>> John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
>>
>> >> apt-fu installs binary packages of build-depends first to avoid circular
>> >> build-dependencies, and then builds and installs the build-depends from
>> >> source if -R is specified. It's a nasty problem but you can't have the
>> >> chicken without the egg, nor the egg without the chicken.
>> >
>> > Yeah, I have found some of those circular build-deps. I believe they
>> > should be considered serious bugs if they aren't already. That's just
>> > wrong. But in my case, I'd rather deal with the breakage manually than
>> > download the .deb.
>>
>> In late 2001, I spent several weekends hand-building quite a large
>> chunk of woody (over 200 source packages). I found quite a number of
>> serious bug in several packages, including missing Build-Deps, and, in
>
> Did you consult the buildd build-dependency override files? Back then
> Build-depends were less than complete.
>
>> the case of (IIRC) Tcl 8.x, it wouldn't build unless the same version
>> was also installed (due to a shlibs problem requiring the just-built
>> library to be installed for shlibdeps to be computed).
>>
>> This sort of automated source building is a very good idea--it will
>> root out a lot of build bugs, and will improve the quality of Debian.
>
> Thats whats autobuilders already do.
Do they ensure that you can *rebuild* from source, after the initial
autobuild? They can't ensure that woody or sarge can be built from
the source. If you took a woody distribution disc, and tried to build
just using the binaries and source packages on the disc, you'd find
many packages have become unbuildable.
--
Roger Leigh
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