Andrey Rahmatullin writes ("Re: source-only uploads"): > On Fri, Sep 01, 2017 at 12:47:41PM +0200, Emmanuel Bourg wrote: > > Just yesterday I completely broke a key package used to build > > many Java packages, and I couldn't even rebuild it to fix the issue. > > Why? Does it B-D on itself? And, if it does, can it not be built using stretch ? Ian.
I don't know about Java but I had an issue with freepascal not so long ago (back when Jessie was stable and stretch was testing). A change in glibc broke freepascal on powerpc stretch/sid to the point it wouldn't install. Freepascal needs itself to build. Sids freepascal would not build in jessie due to using newer debhelper features. To fix this I had to take sid's freepascal, apply the upstream patch for the glibc issue, hack it up so it would build in a jessie environment, build it in a jessie environment on the porterbox, install the binaries from that build into a sid environmentin qemu (because self-built packages can't be installed on porterboxes). This kind of stuff does happen and we need to be able to deal with it. Having said that I believe the default should be to throw away maintainer-built binaries, they should only be accepted if the developer explicitly asks for it.