Bug#872808: [debian-policy] nocheck DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS DEB_BUILD_PROFILES
On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 07:23:14PM +0100, Ghislain Vaillant wrote:
> I also suspect that given DEB_BUILD_PROFILES=nocheck implies
> DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nocheck, the same should be true for nodoc?
Like DEB_BUILD_PROFILES=nocheck does *not* imply
DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nocheck (you must set the latter explicitly),
DEB_BUILD_PROFILES=nodoc does *not* imply DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nodoc.
In general, I think that this historic split into options and profiles
is unfortunate. If we were to restart now, we'd likely remove nocheck,
nodoc and maybe also nostrip from DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS and use
DEB_BUILD_PROFILES exclusively. That's not where we are unfortunately.
Arguably, the same responsibility we require for nocheck should be
applied to nodoc. Given that the nodoc option has a much lower adoption,
I am in favour of simply deprecating it. We should also remove the
"nodocs" option from the archive while at it.
Furthermore, I question the usefulness of nodoc. Since -doc packages are
generally arch:all, most often you can skip them by doing an arch-only
build. In the cases where documentation is stuffed into arch:any
packages, the option modifies package contents. As such, you can no
longer tell whether your modified package correctly satisfies its
reverse dependencies (that may use parts of the documentation other than
/usr/share/doc/<pkg>). As such the nodoc option/profile is generally
considered "unsafe". Given that you cannot simply rebuild the world with
nodoc active, I have yet to encounter a practical use of nodoc. It
seems to be a futile exercise in increasing complexity at present.
Whatever the outcome to the relevant questions is, consensus is not what
we have now.
Helmut
Reply to: