RFC: fix non-strippability of -custom executables in a Debian-specific way
Hello,
I would like to apply to the ocaml package in Debian the patch I
submitted at [1], even though it has been rejected upstream.
I still agree that -custom should be avoided when possible... but
contrarily to Xavier, I don't think it is always possible *and relevant*
in practice. I'm thinking of projects than provide single-use C stubs
(i.e. stubs that are used only it its own executables). I've fixed
ocsigen and coq in this regard... but I am upstream for those projects,
and the changes were quite intrusive. It doesn't look serious to me to
expect all our upstreams to go through all this trouble to support
architectures where ocamlopt is not available, i.e. that only Debian
seems to care about.
The non-strippability issue is still on-topic, as the recent #603580 [2]
bug shows... and I wouldn't be surprised to see similar bugs in the future.
I still think that -custom should be forbidden for libraries by policy,
but I'd like to relax the policy to allow -custom for executables that
use their own "single-use" stubs.
As far as duplication of the interpreter goes: this is a more general
issue with ocaml: native-code executables also embed the runtime, and
all executables also embed the standard library. Anyway, this is a
different issue that should be addressed by other means IMHO.
As far as compatibility goes: this patch might break the possibility to
run the executable with a different runtime. I am dubious about the
usefulness of this (maybe cross-compiling), even though it is
technically possible now. And even with my patch, it will still be
possible to compile seperately the runtime and the bytecode (using the
-make-runtime/-use-runtime options of ocamlc), and do whatever
combination one likes with them.
I am planning to upload ocaml 3.12.0 with this patch unless there is
strong objection, but I would like to hear from other people's opinion
(positive or negative).
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=42;bug=256900
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=603580
Cheers,
--
Stéphane
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