Re: Autobuilding and the build-arch target, again

[Adeodato Simó <dato@net.com.org.es>]

* Wouter Verhelst [Mon, 23 Jan 2006 23:08:00 +0100]:

> And I would strongly suggest you to consider Simon Richter's proposal,
> which sounds a lot cleaner to me: if you have build-depends-indep in
> your debian/control file, you must also implement build-arch and/or
> build-indep.

> Additionally, that has the advantage that most packages probably already
> implement it that way.

  It sounded sensible to me at first, but alas:

    <dato> GyrosGeier: oh, but I actually like your proposal as well.
           only, how many  packages would benefit from having buildds
           call 'build-arch' on them, that have _no_ need for B-D-I?

    <GyrosGeier> dato, I think that would be very few
    [...]
    <GyrosGeier> dato, these won't benefit from the implementation directly.

    <dato> GyrosGeier: right; but if there's a need for it, a solution for all
           would be prefereable, since this would get done probably only once.

    <dato> GyrosGeier: (iow, if your proposal is demonstrated to cover 90+% of
           the relevant cases, cool, I think one can consider it; but if
           it doesn't, it'd be better to aim for a solution that did,
           don't you think?)

  So with that proposal you're restricting the number of packages that
  can benefit from it. Now, if one shows that such restriction does not
  have practical impact... (Or that is considerably less bad that the
  "mega-impact" that requiring build-* in every package is, that too.)

  Cheers,

-- 
Adeodato Simó                                     dato at net.com.org.es
Debian Developer                                  adeodato at debian.org
 
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he
predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
                --  Laurence J. Peter