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Re: Dropping support for debian/xcontrol



On Fri, 4 Mar 2011 21:37:51 +0000
Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> wrote:

> +++ Neil Williams [2011-03-04 21:25 +0000]:
> > xcontrol files were a useful idea but the existing files are only
> > going to get stale, causing build failures.
> > 
> > I'm dropping support for debian/xcontrol files in embuilddeps and
> > I'll drop the files themselves from my own packages in Debian, if
> > such packages need an upload for other reasons.
> 
> Why not wait until a replacement is in place? The mechanism is still
> useful, and still used by cross-dependency satisfaction tools.

The replacement is debian/control - at least it's always correct.

Removing debian/xcontrol support dramatically simplifies embuilddeps,
which means less bugs. 

(Just spent a lot of time chasing a bug in embuilddeps when used inside
pbuilder and sbuild which came down to the duplication inherent in
having two data sources.)

> Without xcontrol you need to use xdeb or wait for multiarch to
> actually be implemented.

Not true. embuilddeps simply uses the debian/control file. There'll be
no support for debian/xcontrol in Multi-Arch.

Is it really worth patching packages to update / create debian/xcontrol
merely to avoid a few packages listed for xapt to process?

It's only embuilddeps that's changing. Very few packages have
debian/xcontrol files in Debian.

embuilddeps is changing to install native and cross dependencies, both
based on debian/control. Same list for both. IMHO debian/xcontrol is
unsustainable and for sane pbuilder/sbuild support, the xcontrol file
should be ignored.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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