Re: build-depending on a virtual package
On Tuesday 02 May 2006 13:42, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 12:14:30AM +0300, George Danchev wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I just discovered the fact that ara build-depends on a virtual package -
> > ocaml-best-compilers. I'm not sure about the reasons we have been after
> > to declared this in a such way, but this should give random failures
> > imho. How are autobuilders supposed know which physical package(s) to
> > install to satisfy the provision of ocaml-best-compilers. Seems it is far
> > better to build-depend on ocaml-native-compilers or I'm missing something
> > ?
>
> When, like in this case, there is only one real package providing the
> virtual package, it is not really a virtual package we are facing, but more
> an 'alias' of some kind.
And that only real package is the only choice available for of autobilders to
go for. If this is the case then it is completely deterministic ;-)
> This problem has been known since 2000 or so, and the buildd coders have
> never been interested in solving the issue.
I'm not sure that the problem is not solvable presently ;-) I searched a
little bit and saw in xfree86-4.3.0.dfsg.1 source package from stable that it
is fine to put arch-dependant stuff in Build-Depends. For example we can have
this:
Build-Depends: ocaml-native-compilers [alpha amd64 arm hppa i386 kfreebsd-i386
ia64 powerpc sparc], ocaml [ m68k mips mipsel powerpc s390 sh ]
Even package (version) [ arch ] is recognized.
Stefano, thanks for pointing the diff btw best and native compilers, I was
quite sleepy yesterday night to guess what was exactly the case ;-)
So, what do you think about setting Build-Depends this way ?
> Right now, this is solved by having the buildd admins set the dependency by
> hand, it seems they are more interested in boring repetitive work than
> working on the code base.
Hm, strange. They used to use Packages-arch-specific filelist to prevent
not-for-us build on sertain arches, but I'm not sure how these things are
handled presently.
> This is in part because they don't come from a formal programming community
> like the ocaml one, but are mostly perl hackers at the base, i believe.
I'm also a moderate perl hacker ;-) But I also like strict languages like
Objective Caml and Ada although I'm quite far from being fluent with them.
> BTW, you do work on the EDOS project on dependency graphs and stuff like
> that, right ? Do you have some insight on how this could be handled better
> than it is done now ?
I believe that it is Berke Durak and/or probably some other ocaml hackers
behind the scene [1]. I'm not sure if they are related to any project at
INRIA, but these guys are doing some really cool stuff.
> I guess that with debian stagnating in its tools,
> other distribs (like mandrake) will clearly take the forefront in a few
> years.
Debian needs some good competitors to evolve I believe ;-)
[1] I just have this information from the Ara's home page at:
http://ara.alioth.debian.org/
which is refering to http://ara.edos-project.org/
which is refering to http://brion.inria.fr/anla/
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