Re: How are ia64 packages built?
Duraid Madina writes...
> So I wonder - how are debian's ia64 packages built? GCC 3.3.3? -O2?
It depends on the package, apt-get source and take a look. Debian policy
recommends -O2, but some packages have to do otherwise to work around bugs.
> That's what I would have assumed, but it doesn't seem that way. If an
> old package is built with the then current compiler and no bugs are
> filed against it, is it ever rebuilt with a new toolchain?
If there isn't a new debian package version, then no. Occasionally packages
are rebuilt and uploaded without source changes, due to something being
fixed in the toolchain that fixes a bug. This is called a binary
Non-Maintainer Upload (binNMU) and doesn't happen very often.
I'm not sure how big a problem it is since packages change so much. It
might be interesting to have a graph of package age. One side benefit of
this model is that you know right away when you break ABIs. If you were
rebuilding everything immediately you might not notice.
> _Are_ packages always built with the current compiler?
Packages are built with the toolchain of the person that uploaded them. It
is expected that developers run up to date unstable. However most
developers don't upload non-i386 binary packages, so the buildd's do that
and the buildd maintainers run the latest working toolchain.
--
Matt Taggart
taggart@debian.org
Reply to: