Re: Multiarch file overlap summary and proposal
* Russ Allbery [2012-02-16 14:55 -0800]:
> Carsten Hey <carsten@debian.org> writes:
> > There are still files that differ that do not need to be fixed, for
> > example documentation that contains it's build date.
>
> Every file that differs has to be fixed in the current multi-arch plan.
> Documentation that contains its build date is going to need to be split
> out into a separate -docs package.
I doubt that ftpmaster would be happy about -doc packages that contain
just a few small man pages.
> I'm fine with splitting documentation; that has far fewer problems than
> splitting other types of files, since documentation isn't tightly coupled
> at a level that breaks software.
debianutils uses a special make target 'prebuild' in debian/rules to
update build system related files and PO files before the actual source
package is built.
This basic idea also could be used to build problematic documentation
files on the maintainers computer before he/she builds the package. The
other targets would then install the prebuilt documentation into the
package without the need to build it first. A proper dependency on
debian/$prebuilt_doc could ensure that maintainers do not forget to run
debian/rules prebuild.
If maintainers choose to use such a target, suggesting a common name for
it in the developers reference could be reasonable.
Regards
Carsten
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