Re: architecture limitation question

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org> writes:

> [Goswin von Brederlow]
>> On the other hand limiting the architectures in debian/control has no
>> effect at all for buildds (or wanna-build). The relevant file would
>> be the Packages-Arch-Specific file.
>
> I've heard this for years.  Why do we have an Architecture: field at
> all, instead of just Arch-Specific: yes or no?
> -- 
> Peter Samuelson | org-tld!p12n!peter | http://p12n.org/

The problem is historical.

In the olden days a source package had

1) Architecture: all
2) Architecture: any
3) Architecture: i386 m68k mips ... (but NOT all)

Any package that had architecture specific binary packages and at least
one Architecture: all package got Architecture: any in the Sources.gz,
hiding the fact that it was architecture specific.

That ment that just because Sources.gz listed a source as Architecture:
any did not mean the source builds anything for a specific architecture.
The buildds could not use that field to decide wether to atempt to build
a source or not. So the Packages-Arch-Specific file was created to say
which package should be build where.


Nowadays dpkg correctly lists the right architectures, as in a package
that builds i386, amd64 and all will have "Architecture: i386 amd64 all"
isntead of any. But wanna-build has not been changed to utilize the now
usefull field.

MfG
        Goswin

PS: P-A-S also lists which binary packages are build / not build per
architecture if only a part of them are build for some architecture.
Not sure where that is actually used.