On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 01:40:34AM -0400, Colin Walters wrote: > I don't quite understand the point of having the 'build' target be > mandatory. My problem with it is precisely what policy says: > > For some packages, notably ones where the same source tree is > > compiled in different ways to produce two binary packages, the > > `build' target does not make much sense. > It seems to me that the 'build' target is certainly useful for many > packages. But that's not a reason to make it required. > Andrew Suffield noted on irc that 'build' was handy before we had > fakeroot, but again that's 1) addressed and 2) still not a reason to > have it be required. > The reason I bring this up is I am designing a new Debian build system, > and it's hard for me to know what to do with it exactly. > I can have users explicitly specify, but why force them to do that if > it's not useful? > So, I'd like to make a policy proposal to change build to an optional > target, much like build-arch and build-indep already are. I know that > sbuild will need to be changed; are there any other issues? Ever worked much with rpms? The "something failed; start over from the beginning" mentality there is the most agitating feature ever when you're developing/porting. The debian/rules build target is an important intermediate stage during the development process, which is of value to many people besides the actual maintainer who might have occasion to work with the package. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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