Bug#476530: control field to tell that cross-building is not possible

[Peter Eisentraut <petere@debian.org>]

Package: dpkg-dev
Version: 1.14.16.6
Severity: wishlist

There are some sporadic bug reports around like #315935 that basically say 
that the package cannot be cross-compiled.  I think it would be useful to have 
a control field that told dpkg-buildpackage that cross-compiling won't work 
for the package in question.  (dpkg-buildpackage uses the Architecture field 
to see whether the package will build for a given architecture, so this would 
be quite similar.)  Or maybe another way to convey this information would be 
better, but I think this ought to be recorded somewhere so that the 
cross-building folk don't waste their resources.

Policy isn't entirely clear.  Section 4.9 mentions the DEB_*_ARCH variables, 
but it is not clear whether their use is mandated.  In bug #315935, it is 
opined that cross-build support isn't mandatory, which is of course the 
practical reality anyway.