Re: Unsustainable debian/rules as official build entry point?

[Felipe Sateler <fsateler@debian.org>]

On Wed, 18 Oct 2017 11:36:41 +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:

> And I've got to question whether we should keep supporting it or just
> declare dpkg-buildpackage to be that entry point.

I think it makes sense to declare dpkg-buildpackage the official entry 
point. Reasons for:

1. It is already the de-facto entry point, since buildds use dpkg-
buildpackage, and so do pbuilder and sbuild.

2. Most (all?) of the archive already depends on dpkg-dev, by using the /
usr/share/dpkg/*.mk helpers (either directly or indirectly via CDBS) and 
using dpkg-* tools (either directly or indirectly via debhelper).

3. Providing a clean environment helps the reproducibility efforts, by 
providing a single place where many weird environment variables can be 
neutered. It probably will also help other archive-wide efforts

4. dpkg-buildpackage has the --target and --as-root flags to invoke any 
debian/rules target since 1.15 (oldoldstable has 1.16).


Reasons against:

1. Finger memory. This can be alleviated via a suitable alias 
drules='dpkg-buildpackage --target'.

I can't come up with other reasons.

Let's make dpkg-buildpackage the official entry point.

-- 
Saludos,
Felipe Sateler