Bug#374029: Fixing inconsisten and unusefull Build-Depends/Conflicts definition
Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>> On the other hand the savings can be huge. Think about how many
>> packages install latex and fonts and generate the documentation
>> needlessly during build. Installing and purging latex as well as all
>> the initex runs and font generation takes up a awfull lot of time
>
> I think most packages build their documentation or other
> architecture-independent parts as part of a general make/make install
> process, so it's not possible to create useful separate build-arch and
> build-indep targets.
A lot of software has a doc dir and it is relatively simple to
seperate recursing into doc from the rest. Unless the build-* targets
become actually usefull nobody will put any work into splitting the
build process into arch and indep parts though.
> Looking at the archive right now, there are only 129 source packages (in
> testing) that are not Architecture: all and declare Build-Depends-Indep
> (and quite a few of those are obviously wrong). So it seems to be a
> limited problem. However, if your concern is mostly to reduce
> installation time of documentation tools, then the current
> Build-Depends/Build-Depends-Indep setup seems to work quite well. I
> don't see where Build-Depends-Arch would fit in there.
The problem currently is that it isn't even possible to seperate them
even if the makefile suports it because the build target must be
called. The proposal is as much a clarification and extension of the
Build-Depends* fields as a mechanism to detect and use build-*
targets. Only then can one split arch and indep building and have a
meaningfull Build-Depends-Indep.
MfG
Goswin
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