Bug#835452: debian-policy: Deprecating dependency of "binary" on "build"

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.9.8
Severity: wishlist

Greetings.

Debian Policy 4.9 says:

 Both binary-* targets should depend on the build target, or on the
 appropriate build-arch or build-indep target, if provided, so that the
 package is built if it has not been already.


I don't see the point at all:


* Autobuilders *always* invoke the build-* targets first.

* dpkg-buildpackage *always* invoke the build/build-* target first.

* AFAIK, we have never actually supported this way of building packages,
and I doubt it would be a good idea to start supporting it now. We
should preferably have only one standard way of building a package
(debian/rules clean && debian/rules build && debian/rules binary),
(and its -arch and -indep variants), not two, of which one of them is
tested over and over again by the autobuilders every day and the other
is never tested.

* Building as root should be discouraged.



My proposal to fix this is to remove the requirement that "binary"
depends on "build", including the "rationale".

I don't know if this proposal will seem controversial, because we have
been doing that for ages, so please let us consider all the pros and
all the cons.

I guess that no package will be affected by this change, because in
general removing a requirement does never make policy compliant
packages to become non-compliant.

Thanks.