Re: Environment variables, debian/rules and dpkg-buildpackage
"Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@debian.org> writes:
> Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> The only builds Debian supports are not just the buildd ones. As
>> members of the free software community, we should also cater to end
>> users building, tweaking, and rebuilding our software.
> You are a very special case: a developer since very long time, with a
> enormous knowledge of debian policy (and dpkg internal). But I really
> think that most people outside DD use dpkg-buildpackage because it is
> the easier way (without need to remember a lot of details). I think
> also that most of DDs use dpkg-buildpackage.
The number of people using different methods is fairly irrelevant to
Manoj's point. The question is more fundamental: are packages built by
a makefile that we call debian/rules, or are they built by the program
dpkg-buildpackage using debian/rules as a configuration file for that
program?
If they're built by the program, then anyone who wants to properly build
the software, even if they don't want to go all the way to the package,
will need to use the program, since people will write debian/rules such
that it assumes the program is in use. They'll assume default CFLAGS
are set and so forth.
I don't think this is the right direction to go, but I'm not going to
stomp off in a huff if we go that direction or anything. :) But I do
want to be sure that we're all clear on what we're saying if we do take
that approach and make dpkg-buildpackage the only supported way to build
packages. I think it's likely that if we go that route, with it
providing the defaults, we'll find over time that some packages will
either not build or will mis-build with debian/rules build and no one
will notice or be particularly interested in fixing it.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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