Re: Proposed release goal: fix debian/rules build-arch

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Le Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 07:51:14PM +0100, Cyril Brulebois a écrit :
> 
> Does “build reproducibility” mean something to you?

Hi Cyril,

Build reproduciblitity means to me that two instances package built in the same
environment should be reasonably identical (things like timestamps or random
numbers will never be reproducible).

Interestingly, the Debian packages are built in an environment where
reproducibility is only transient as Sid is constantly updated. This is even a
feature in the case of binNMUs.

I do not think that anybody proposes a Build-Recommend field that can result in
binary differences in the context of the Debian buildd network. However, since
I agree with the persons who question the usefulness of distinguishing
Build-Indep dependancies, because dropping this distinction would make my work
easier and therefore more robust, I try to figure out a possible alternative.

For the purpose of skipping documentation building and test making, be it
locally or remotely, Build-Recommends can be a useful alternative to
Build-Depends-Indep. In particular, the use of Build-Depends-Indep to emulate a
"nodoc" option is only possible if the documentation is separated from the main
package in an Arch:all package. For some packages, for instance altree, it
would mean to make a -doc package with a single PDF file in, for the sake of
removing TeX and LaTeX from the build-dependancies.

I hope that this also anwers to Steve.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan