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Re: Opinions on CDBS amongst sponsors



On Mon, 11 Dec 2006 10:25:58 +0000
Neil Williams <linux@codehelp.co.uk> wrote:

So the main objections to CDBS are that it hides too much, making it
hard to know what is actually going on.

How does this compare with other helper scripts like debuild and
pdebuild?

Have there been *actual* incidences when a CDBS package has failed on
the buildd's for reasons that can be clearly attributed to CDBS itself?

Do those who dislike CDBS also all use dpkg-buildpackage in full or is
debuild "better" somehow?

I'm asking this because it is directly relevant to my emdebian work :
I'm writing wrappers and helpers that take the drudgery out of
converting packages for cross-building. Part of that is writing a
replacement for debuild that can cope with cross-building, handling
cross-built dependencies and cross-building packages such that there is
no effect on building native packages on the same system.

It's a question of extent. How much abstraction is too much, how much
control is too little?

Documentation is going to be a key point. I'm trying to write the
scripts to have multiple levels of verbosity so that with foo -v -v -v
it gives you output that is almost step-by-step walking you through the
commands being used. I'm also preparing manpages for each command -
something that cdbs lacks (which should probably be a bug report). I'll
also be updating the emdebian wiki to keep those docs in sync too.

Cross-building is another learning curve beyond Debian packaging and
I'm conscious that it isn't easy to explain or follow sometimes. If
anyone is interested in helping "proof-read" the documentation and
script output from a position of someone new to cross-building, let me
know.

--


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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