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Re: Consistent handling of the DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS



On Tue, 6 Nov 2007 14:37:56 -0500
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:

> And things shouldn't be "must" in policy unless they're intended to be RC
> bugs.  I don't see how this would ever make sense to be a "must".

Why? Any test suite that runs compiled binaries must be completely
disabled for cross-compiling and there are few test suites that would
not be disabled under such a rule. Are you saying that cross compiling
alone is not sufficiently important to be the cause of a *must* in
Policy?

Emdebian seeks to become a normal part of Debian in time, but things
like this need to be in place before that can begin. I'm drowning in
patches at this end, Steve!
;-)

As long as the Debian default is to run every check that is enabled by
a package, I don't see why it would be a problem to ensure that all
packages support the -nocheck in a consistent manner, enforced by
Policy.

Consistency is more important than anything else in this discussion of
DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS.

> Rather, I would suggest that the wording for this should be along the lines
> of:
> 
>    nocheck
>      This string means that test suites should not be run during the package
>      build.  Packages with extensive test suites that are enabled at build
>      time should support this option.

The size of the test suite is completely irrelevant. Executing a single
compiled binary will cause any cross build to break, even if it is a
1kb no-op.

   nocheck
     This string means that test suites must not be run during the
package build in order to support cross compilation. Packages that run
any test suites at build time must support omitting the test suite
completely, either using this option or upon detecting cross-compilation
using dpkg-architecture.


-----

Test suites are optional, no package needs to have them enabled just to
build. They are nice and good and worth having but not at the expense
of disabling large scale cross building.

If cross-compiling alone is insufficient to get an optional element set
to 'must', it makes it much more difficult to see how Debian will
support cross-building properly when more difficult changes need to be
made.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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