Bug#759186: debian-policy: please consider adding "nodoc" as a possible value for DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS to policy

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Johannes Schauer wrote:
> Quoting Jonathan Nieder (2014-08-25 20:35:34)
>> Johannes Schauer wrote:

>>> When bootstrapping, a common approach is to do a build without
>>> documentation to be able to drop the build dependencies on documentation
>>> building tools. This is why the build profile name "nodoc" exists which, if
>>> enabled, allows builds without documentation [3].
>>
>> Could we just point people to the build profile and encourage using
>> that instead of DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS for nodoc builds?
>
> yes, that would be possible. Introducing "nodoc" as a valid DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS
> is just a suggestion because it is unofficially used and also a valid
> DEB_BUILD_PROFILES value. There is no hard requirement for this, I guess it
> would just be "nice".

Thanks.  I guess I'm happy either way on this one. ;-)

[...]
>> Is it possible for a package to specify pre-upload checks that should run on
>> autobuilders using autopkgtest, which would avoid having to have an
>> DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS based ifdef for that?
>
> I'm not sure what you mean here. What exactly do you want to check in an
> autopkgtest?

I would like to move the "make check" invocation in packages I maintain
from "debian/rules build" to an autopkgtest.  But today, buildds don't
run autopkgtests or use them as information about whether the build
succeeded.  So I can't.

Oh well --- that's a subject for a separate bug.

Thanks,
Jonathan