Re: Bug#489771: New Build-Options field and build-arch option, please review

[Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>]

On Wed, 10 Sep 2008, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > > People have noticed that and already requested that we can call arbitrary
> > > targets of debian/rules with all the proper initialization done precisely
> > > for test purpose during packaging work (see #477916).
> > 
> > I must say, I really do not like this direction.  debhelper and cdbs and
> > similar sytsems are the places to provide this help where people want to
> > use it, in my opinion.  We have a lot of past experience with that and we
> > have the compatibility level to handle smoothing transitions.  (And to
> > provide a way for people to never transition, I admit, and I see where
> > that's the problem that you're solving, but I prefer that problem to the
> > problems introduced by the instability of having the package build
> > infrastructure change the input to the builds without coordination with
> > the package.)
> 
> I like to say I concurr with Russ. There are some much difference
> between packages that distributions wide default does not make sense.
> Such change would rather lead me to hardcode values of
> DEBIAN_BUILD_OPTIONS in debian/rules if they are used blidly.

But more and more people want to be able to change distribution wide
default: Emdebian wants to enable "nodocs" and "nocheck" by default, other
want to be able to enable hardening options by default and I agree with
them that official support for such a facility is desirable.

See also #498355 and #498380 for such requests from Emdebian.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog

Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/