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Re: Which targets are mandatory in debian/rules?



Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> writes:

> On Sun, Feb 07, 1999 at 10:43:47PM +0000, James Troup wrote:
> > No, the build target should be present and should do something,
> > i.e. build the package.  Even if it only depends on the two other
> > build targets, it should still build stuff.
> 
> No, section 3.2.1 of the packaging manual says that it is acceptable
> for the build target to do nothing.

Thanks for being the third person to point that out.  I was wrong,
sorry.

The point I was trying to make, however, remains valid.
`dpkg-buildpackage -rwhatever' should successfully build all
components of a package (and if policy contradicts that, it needs
fixed, period).  If you want to invoke policy and build the two
components only on `binary' that's fine by me, as it won't break when
compiling for m68k, but it seems more sensible to me to have a dummy
build target which does both build targets, simply on the grounds of
least surprise, but also because I can't see any reason _not_ to.

``I did `debian/rules build' to build this package, and it worked for
the other 2000, but not this one.  How do I get this package to build
from source?''

``Oh, you have to do `debian/rules build-a' and `debian/rules build-b'
or `debian/rules binary'.''

``Oh.''

-- 
James

``Mailers and list servers are notorious for doing all sorts of
really, really stupid things with mail.  "Hey, RFC822 doesn't
explicitly prohibit us from adding the string `wE aRe ElItE!!!!!1!!'
to the end of all lines passing through our server, so let's do
that!!!!1!"  Yes, but RFC822 wasn't designed to be read by morons.
Things that were considered to be self-evident were not discussed.
So.  Here we are.''  Gnus Manual - Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen 


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