Re: Bug#43787: changed title, and remade the proposed change

[Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>]

On Thu, Sep 09, 1999 at 08:42:18PM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > Sorry to see you take this to that extreme. I'm voicing my opinion. If I feel that
> > there is speific agreement that it _should_ be forced instead of suggested, I'll be
> > more than happy to comply and change the proposal. Right now, I don't see any agreement
> > that this is what most want.
> 
> What I don't understand is what reason there are not to "enforce" it, because
> you can always comply, there really isn't a problem, and it is opening the
> door for a standard interface to pass build flags. OTOH, not enforcing it
> has the chance that people will make up their own methods, and we missed a
> way for standardization early on.
> 
> I had this problem with dpkg-architecture: Many packages used
> "arch=$(shell dpkg-architecture)", which did sorta work until the Hurd port
> came up. Despite the fact that "--print-architecture" is an undocumented
> feature and not standardized at all. The result is that many rules script
> use it, and those scripts are definitive broken on the Hurd. My
> dpkg-arhcitetcure proposal fixes this situation by providing a standard
> interface to get the build architecture and make it a requirement.
> This is a big step forward.
> 
> In the same way I wanted to see this proposal progress. I was disappointed
> seeing how little ambitious your proposal ended up to be.

Ambition was killed when the flames started being thrown (not by you). I wanted
this atleast be in policy in one form or another, and actually agree with what you say.
I'm just worried that asking for it to be required will result in the proposal being
dumped from non-consenus (which is what seemed to happen).

If I can get some others to agree to support the proposal to say something
like "if you implement the ability to build your package with debug symbols,
you must support this method". I want to note that it should _not_ say that
you can't also implement another method in conjunction with this one, just
this is the one that must be available if you implement it at all (note,
implementing debugging builds is not required, but I suspect that bugreports
with patches to enable it will be accepted quite well).

> > Let's see, I was rude to you how? Thanks for the civil reply.
> 
> Sorry, I was annoyed. At least I managed to flame without calling names :)

No problem :)

Ben