Bug#846970: Patch to document Build-Indep-Architecture field

[Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name>]

Hello,

On Thu, Jun 14 2018, Jess Hall wrote:

> How about "You should not specify that the packages are buildable on
> only one architecture."?

This is better than what I wrote, thanks, Jess.

Here is the updated and rebased patch for seconding:

>  policy/ch-controlfields.rst | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 27 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/policy/ch-controlfields.rst b/policy/ch-controlfields.rst
> index df95d1d..73331f3 100644
> --- a/policy/ch-controlfields.rst
> +++ b/policy/ch-controlfields.rst
> @@ -121,6 +121,8 @@ package) are:
>
>  -  :ref:`Build-Depends et al <s-sourcebinarydeps>`
>
> +-  :ref:`Build-Indep-Architecture <s-f-Build-Indep-Architecture>`
> +
>  -  :ref:`Standards-Version <s-f-Standards-Version>` (recommended)
>
>  -  :ref:`Homepage <s-f-Homepage>`
> @@ -1036,6 +1038,31 @@ This field is automatically added to Debian source control files
>  field may also be used in source package control files
>  (``debian/control``) if needed in other situations.
>
> +.. _s-f-Build-Indep-Architecture:
> +
> +``Build-Indep-Architecture``
> +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> +
> +Specification of architectures on which the architecture-independent
> +binary packages are known to be buildable and/or not buildable.  If
> +this field is not specified, it defaults to ``any``, matching all
> +Debian machine architectures.  If specified, it should be either
> +
> +-  A unique single word identifying a Debian machine architecture as
> +   described in :ref:`s-arch-spec`.
> +
> +-  An architecture wildcard identifying a set of Debian machine
> +   architectures, see :ref:`s-arch-wildcard-spec`.
> +
> +This header is useful in the rare case where architecture-independent
> +packages cannot be built on all architectures for reasons outside the
> +maintainer's control.
> +
> +Although the syntax of the field permits it, you should avoid
> +specifying that the package can be built on only a single
> +architecture.  This provides flexibility to the administrators of
> +autobuilder infrastructure.
> +
>  .. _s5.7:

-- 
Sean Whitton