Re: debian-policy: please document build profiles

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Johannes Schauer writes ("Re: debian-policy: please document build profiles"):
> One way to solve this, would be to change the build profile spec to
> say that the Built-For-Profiles field is only to be added if either
> one of the following build profiles was active during the build:
> 
>  - pkg.$sourcepackage.$anything
>  - stage1
>  - stage2
>  - nodoc
> 
> Though I'm not sure whether keeping this static list in dpkg would
> be very smart. One way to avoid having to keep a list of "dirty"
> build profiles in dpkg would be to extend the requirement of
> producing identical binary packages to all profile names. I can see
> how this would make using above four profiles more inconvenient. I
> just still see the temptation of abusing above profile names in ways
> that breaks dependency resolvers.

The build profile namespace could be divided up, with existing
extensions grandfathered.  For example, dirty profiles could start
with a capital letter, or something.

> I'm also wondering why keeping the content of the field directly in
> the binary package is necessary in the first place. Is it to be able
> to debug problems with the binary package later on? We are already
> throwing away other useful information about how the binary package
> was built like:

If the binary package is built with a dirty build profile I think it
is important that this is noted in the .deb.  That will make it much
easier to guard against (and spot) problems where such a .deb is used
out of its intended context.

Ian.