* Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@debian.org>, 2014-02-26, 08:39:
First, we need new syntax to specify the architectures an arch:all package may be built on. (There may be cases where this cannot be deducted from the other binary packages it builds – if any. Heck, there may even be cases where a source package has multiple arch:all packages that need to be built on *different* architectures.)
“multiple arch:all packages that need to be built on different architectures” is not something that dpkg-buildpackage supports currently anyway. Let's not over-engineer…
Then we need to have this syntax supported by dpkg in stable, AIUI…Yo, tg,I was going to send a mail about this yesterday. I've decided I'm going to start a quest to support this. I settled on Build-Indep-Architecture myself.
FWIW, as an alternative for the new field, we could use Packages-arch-specific.
BTW; the syntax would define a single arch; you know, in the spirit of reproducability.
I have mixed feeling about this. On one hand, most[0] of arch:all packages can be built on more than one architecture, so “single arch” sounds like an artificial limitation. On the other hand, we very much don't want the same arch:all package to be built by multiple buildds…
[0] Likely s/Most/All/ if you take into account hypothetical architectures that nobody has boostrapped (yet?!), e.g. musl-linux-m68k.
-- Jakub Wilk