Bug#804190: please support cross compiler builds without relying on binutils-multiarch

[Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de>]

Control: tags -1 - patch

On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 12:20:14AM +0100, Matthias Klose wrote:
>  - the patch is incomplete.  It still calls the binutils tools
>    for the host unprefixed.

Can you give an example here? If you mean that some dh_strip calls are
not prefixed, then that's intentional. See below for why.

>  - the patch doesn't work for cross building cross compilers
>    with host != target.

Can you go into more detail here? My attempts at cross building gcc
always fail earlier, so I cannot test that yet.

>  - maybe make it clear which tools are used (target_strip, host_strip
>    instead of cross_strip).

I did consider that but deemed it inconsistent with the rest of the
packaging. We already have cross_shlibdeps, cross_gencontrol, and
cross_makeshlibs. Calling it cross_strip was the obvious continuation.

So cross_strip could be renamed to target_strip in principle, but we do
not need host_strip at all, because using the host architecture is the
default.  That's also why some of the dh_strip invocations do not need
to be prefixed. Is there anything wrong with this approach?

> I think that the rather simplistic view of dh_strip should be addressed in
> this context too, always using the non-prefixed binutils tools.  In GCC you
> don't have binary packages anymore with both host and target objects within
> the same binary package, however this is not guaranteed for other binary
> packages. So you need to find a way to strip host and target objects in the
> same binary package.

I believe that there is no reason to support multiple architectures in a
single binary package in dh_strip. At this point we have no single user
of such functionality and debhelper is supposed to cover the common
case.

Given these questions (yours and mine), I think that the patch should
not target the -24 upload, but receive more testing with the pending
packaging changes.

Helmut