Re: Environment variables, debian/rules and dpkg-buildpackage
On Monday 11 May 2009 00:06:09 Steve Langasek wrote:
> Or maybe I've misunderstood, and there are
> Debian developers who are building official packages for *upload* by
> calling debian/rules by hand, and that's what people are concerned about
> preserving while still getting the benefits of these distro build flags?
>
> I hadn't considered that possibility, because I can't imagine anyone
> wanting to build packages that way instead of using dpkg-buildpackage,
> which does it all in a single command. So I really don't consider that an
> important use case, weighed against the concerns I outlined.
I don't either, but it would probably be better to spell that out explicitly
somewhere.
> > For example, you possibly get something different depending on whether
> > you call debian/rules, dpkg-buildpackage, debuild, or pbuilder. And the
> > difference is hard to explain or analyze.
>
> Er, both debuild and pbuilder invoke dpkg-buildpackage. So it seems clear
> to me that the only difference would be when calling debian/rules directly,
> and at that point you're opting out of lots of other conveniences, not just
> distro build policy.
Well, debuild calls dpkg-buildpackage most of the time, unless you give a
specific target (which would again possibly be of interest to those who are
interested in calling debian/rules by hand for some reason). And that is also
something newish. Plus, you can set separate environment variables for
debuild. And probably also for pbuilder. And you can set environment
variables or possibly site files within the pbuilder chroot. And there is also
the option of pbuilder calling debuild -- who knows what that really does.
So again some of this would become clearer if the actually supported build
methods are more clearly spelled out. And then if someone could fold all of
the functionality of debuild into dpkg-buildpackage, there would be even less
distraction and variation.
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