On 2024-02-22 11:37 +0530, Shriram Ravindranathan wrote: > Thank you Bastien, > I tried doing this but it appears that the scripts to build these example > files all depend on having the highlight binary itself installed on the > machine. I am unsure whether it is okay to have the package depend on itself > for building. Packages that use themselves to build are problematic for bootstrapping and cross-building. When cross-building you can't (usually) run the binaries just built because they are the wrong architecture. When bootstrapping packages that depend on themselves cause dependency loops which are a pain (we can't build foo because we don't have foo yet). We have 'build profiles' (older name 'staged builds') to deal with this. i.e you define a minimum 'stage1' build profile which does not have the circular dependency (and the normal build which does) so the building of the final version can be automated. The choices here are to 1) use the binary just build during the build 2) have a self dependency and use a packaged binary 1) Is simple but prevents the package cross-building. Usually the best thing to do is just skip that part if cross-building (you can live without the examples) Just ensure that the build doesn't fail due to missing files. 2) Works for cross-building (by the magic of multiarch) but you should add a stage notation so it can easily be built for new architectures, which is a bit of a faff. In case '2' you have to worry about version skew. How much does it matter if examples/whatever are built with the previous/an older version of the package? Case '1' avoids this. This is very specific to the package in question: sometimes it needs to be exactly the same, sometimes a version from a decade ago will be just fine. This is the main reason people usually pick option '1'. https://wiki.debian.org/BuildProfileSpec https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBootstrap https://wiki.debian.org/CrossBuildPackagingGuidelines All the above is quite a lot to take in, and you don't need to worry too much, but it is a good idea to at least have this stuff in the back of your mind when packaging. Ideally this would all work correctly on the whole archive, and packagers are the ones best-placed to stick in the necessary runes. Wookey -- Principal hats: Debian, Wookware, ARM http://wookware.org/
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