[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Bug#591857: debian-policy: please clarify which of DEB_{BUILD,HOST}_* is which



Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.9.1.0
Severity: normal

It is utterly non-obvious what the BUILD and HOST architectures mean.

Is the latter the build (duh) host, or the target host?
Is the former the machine you build _on_ or build _for_?

Browsing the relevant documentation (debian-policy, man dpkg, ...),
I found no place that disambiguates those.  Only after asking around, I got
pointed to autoconf's documentation, and it turned out the naming goes
contrary to what I thought to be the more likely variant.

This needs to be made more clear, badly.
Could you please reword section 4.9 to mention that BUILD is the one you
host the build on, and HOST the one your build for?  The current version
just says that HOST is the host machine, and BUILD is the build machine,
which is just a waste of words.



Reply to: