Re: Let's remove mips, mipsel, s390 ... [or have strict arch: control? ]

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net> writes:

> Rudy Godoy <rudy@kernel-panik.org> writes:
>
>> Regarding this issue I was thinking about it since I've faced in a
>> situation where a package[0] I maintain does have "high" hardware
>> requirements, which led me to think if it is really wise to have it
>> with "arch: any" since probably in some arches it would not ever be
>> installed/used, or even if case it will run really slow or even crash
>> and the user will not enjoy the software as was intended by upstream,
>> so maybe it doesn't make sense to have this software sent to
>> autobuilders and waste their resources/time for this, probably there
>> are more software with the same kind of hw reqs. in Debian.
>
> I think it's up to the buildd folks to decide a question like this.
> They can add it to the buildd exceptions table and not build it or
> request that you take an arch out of the arch list.

Which also avoids that packages will be unavailable on every new
architecture debian introduces because the maintainer has to adjust
the Architecture: line.

The best course is to have "Architecture: any" in control and let the
arch exclude the package if it overly burdens the buildds.

Also note that each buildd has a list of package that it will only
build if idle and one for packages they won't build. The slower
buildds (not archs) can thus list long compiling packages in the
former and buildds with to little disk space can list large packages
in the later.

That means some packages will only be compiled on fast or big buildds
where they will finish in a timely manner (or at all).

MfG
        Goswin