Bug#430649: Bug#209008: New proposed wording for DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS
On Mon, Dec 31, 2007 at 11:24:45AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com> writes:
>
> > The majority of packages already supports parallel builds by simply
> > passing the appropiate -j flag to make. Not that I object to a
> > "parallel" parameter since it can bring some benefits in very specific
> > situations, but please make sure this doesn't hinder what is already
> > working. In particular:
> >
> > - It'd be good if it required that packages do not disable parallel flags in
> > make in case they're already present (dpkg-buildpackage -jN), even if the
> > parallel=N parameter is not present at all.
>
> dpkg-buildpackage -jN adds the parallel=N parameter, so I don't understand
> what you're getting at here or why this provision would be useful.
Ah, just ignore me on this. I was under the impression that they used my
patch in dpkg-buildpackage, which just added -jN. Never mind then.
> > - I think it'd make sense to add a "should" requirement that packages
> > allow any amount of parallelisation. This requirement wouldn't really
> > be excessive, I think. It's just a matter of writing Makefiles
> > properly by defining the right targets and dependencies; something
> > that's easily archieveable when people remove bad habits like assuming
> > make processes dependencies in a particular order, etc.
>
> I think I'm opposed. The majority of packages don't take long enough to
> build to make supporting parallel building that compelling and many (I
> would guess most) upstreams never test their packages with parallel builds
> and have a wide variety of subtle bugs. I think this requirement would
> put way too much of a burden on Debian maintainers, not to mention making
> a huge number of packages insta-buggy (as revealed by recent analysis
> posted to debian-devel).
I thought the number of affected packages would be small. Can you point me
to that analisys ?
--
Robert Millan
<GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call!
<DRM> What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
(as seen on /.)
Reply to: