Re: optional package in Build-Depends (how?)
Dmitry Smirnov <onlyjob@member.fsf.org> writes:
> On Monday 27 February 2012 14:09:21 Craig Small wrote:
>> Specifically to your testing, valgrind testing should probably be
>> opportunistic, so test if valgrind is available and don't otherwise. I
>> think dejagnu does it that way.
> OK, so for really optional packages like 'check' or 'bison' it may be
> appropriate to use something like "check | dpkg" if we're not linking
> against it.
I would only consider using a hack like this if the package really isn't
available everywhere. For something like bison, just build-depend on
bison and be done with it. As much as possible, you should try to ensure
that the package builds exactly the same way everywhere, using the same
tools, and only back off from that if some tool really isn't available at
all on some target architecture.
Even with valgrind, personally I'd just list a specific set of
architectures on which valgrind is required, even if you also
opportunistically test for its existence. There's no reason to allow
*not* running valgrind tests on i386 and amd64.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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