Re: Bug#687001: ITP: optional-dev -- fake (empty) dev package

[Jon Dowland <jmtd@debian.org>]

On Sat, Sep 08, 2012 at 10:01:17PM +1000, Dmitry Smirnov wrote:
> When building for as many architectures as we have, situation when some 
> dependencies are missing (or can't exist) on some architectures is not rare.
> 
> However we still want to build our packages with all features possible.

You should have two (or more) binary targets, each of which excludes the 
architecture(s) that do not support the particular feature. E.g. if baz is
not available on hurd:

	Package: foo
	Architecture: any !hurd
	Build-Depends: bar libbaz-dev

(I forget the precise syntax for excluding an arch here)
and

	Package: foo-hurd
	Build-Depends: bar
	Architecture: hurd

Or possibly in some circumstances

	Package: foo-minimal
	Build-Depends: bar
	Architecture: any

…where foo without baz might be useful for someone on any architecture.

Explain the differences clearly in the package long description.