Re: Bootstrappable Debian - a decision is needed, patches exist
Hi Steve,
Quoting Steve Langasek (2013-10-20 05:46:15)
> My recollection is that the "abolishing" of the Build-Depends-Stage1 field
> was done by the same dpkg maintainer who you say is now not giving you
> feedback.
Correct.
> It's elegant that a general-purpose syntax has been proposed, but elegance
> isn't worth anything if it doesn't result in shipping code.
>
> Being able to automatically bootstrap the Debian archive is self-evidently
> useful to the project. The other uses proposed for profiles are all corner
> cases that should be kept far, far away from the archive. I don't think the
> implementation of automated bootstrapping should be allowed to block on such
> pie-in-the-sky plans for profiles.
>
> My understanding is that all build-dependency loops in the archive can be
> broken with a single additional stage (stage1), so only one added profile
> and one added build-dependency field would be required. Yes, it could
> bitrot, but it's better than not having any of the data in the source
> packages at all.
I agree with you and from my talking to wookey, he probably agrees too, that
*any* solution is fine as long as it's accepted by dpkg devs and allows us to
finally make Debian bootstrappable.
You nicely summarized the situation and I dont think I have much more to add.
Yes, falling back to the Build-Depends-Stage1 proposal (for which patches also
existed for over a year, see bug#661538) would also fully satisfy our needs for
now until something fancier is needed.
In addition, my analysis from last year showed that probably below 70 source
packages have to be modified to make everything bootstrappable. If that is the
case, then any future switch to something different might still be managable.
> And if someone really finds this inelegant and insists that we should extend
> the syntax of the Build-Depends field, let them step up and make that happen
> instead of pointing at grandiose plans they're not making any effort to
> implement. A Build-Depends-Stage1 field requires no support from dpkg in the
> archive to implement.
I would love if that person did.
cheers, josch
Reply to: