Bug#475037: openoffice.org-base: Can not be compile on arch mipsel

[Thiemo Seufer <ths@networkno.de>]

Rene Engelhard wrote:
> reassign 475037 openoffice.org
> tag 475037 + moreinfo
> retitle FTBFS on mipsel: config.guess too old
> thanks
> 
> [ CC'ing debian-mips ]
> 
> Hi,
> 
> liu shiwei wrote:
> > Subject: openoffice.org-base: Can not be compile on arch mipsel
> > Package: openoffice.org-base
> > Version: 1:2.4.0~rc6-1
> 
> Why are you filing this against the database component? ;-)
> 
> > File:
> > ooo-build/build/OOH680_m12/libtextcat/unxlngmips.pro/misc/build/libtextcat-2.2/config.guess,
> > 
> > It is too old,Can not be used on arch mipsel/mips64el.

config.guess is not too old, the problem is that
 a) config.guess uses uname to detect the system, so it guesses wrong
    on a multi-ABI kernel. There's only one "uname -m" value, but three
    ABIs supported by the kernel.
 b) there is for Upstream packages no better way to guess the ABI the
    programmer intended to use.

For Debian, the solution is to check for the intended ABI via

  dpkg-architecture -qDEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE

and pass that value explicitly to ./configure (or whatever the upstream
build system uses). This avoids to get different results with different
machines. E.g. a i386 chroot on a amd64 machine, or simply a i386
installation with a 64-bit kernel will run in the same problem.

> And how do you explain
> http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?&pkg=libtextcat&ver=2.2-2&arch=mips&file=log
> http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?&pkg=libtextcat&ver=2.2-2&arch=mipsel&file=log
> and
> http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?&pkg=openoffice.org&ver=1%3A2.4.0%7Erc2-1&arch=mips&file=log
> http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?&pkg=openoffice.org&ver=1%3A2.4.0%7Erc2-1&arch=mipsel&file=log
> 
> It built. No changes since then in anything related libtextcat.
> [ Now OOo does not build anymore, right, but that's a buildd/perl/sbuild
> problem, neither one of OOo nor libtextcat ]

The buildd's use the linux32 personality to work around the problem.
(Have a look at the "linux32" package if you want to find out more.)


Thiemo