Re: possible MBF: automatically detecting unused build dependencies

[Jérémy Lal <kapouer@melix.org>]

Le lundi 07 juillet 2014 à 09:07 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh a
écrit :
> On Mon, 07 Jul 2014, Johannes Schauer wrote:
> > MBF template email:
> > 
> > --%<---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Subject: Please consider removing the build dependencies on $foo, $bar and $baz
> > Severity: wishlist
> > Usertag: unusedbd
> > User: bootstrap@lists.debian.org
> > 
> > Dear Maintainer,
> > 
> > the build dependencies $foo, $bar and $baz of this source package do not seem
> > to be needed. Neither are any of their files accessed during the build nor are
> > their dependencies on other binary packages required. Please consider dropping
> > those build dependencies to make bootstrapping Debian easier.
> > 
> > You can find more detail about the procedures that were used to find this
> > problem in the MBF announcement on debian-devel: $email
> > -->%---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Please don't assume that the unused build dependency is always where the
> defect is.  Rather, the MBF text should account for the possibility that the
> unused build-dependency should have been used in the first place, but
> something is broken in the build and it is being left unused.

Consider also the case when arch:all package require a build dependency
on a package that only builds on some archs, to prevent the arch:all
package being available on archs where its dependencies are not.
nodejs and node-* packages are such an example.

Jérémy.