Bug#968226: Build-Depends-If-Available

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 10:05:42AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> writes:
> 
> > -policy: this is a question that has come up before
> > (https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/12/msg00470.html is another
> > example that springs to mind, but I'm pretty sure there are more), so I
> > think we should document in Policy that a) buildd only looks at the
> > first dependency in alternative build-dependencies, and b) why this is
> > the case.
> 
> Policy already says:
>     
>     While Build-Depends, Build-Depends-Indep and Build-Depends-Arch permit
>     the use of alternative dependencies, these are not normally used by
>     the Debian autobuilders. To avoid inconsistency between repeated
>     builds of a package, the autobuilders will default to selecting the
>     first alternative, after reducing any architecture-specific
>     restrictions for the build architecture in question. While this may
>     limit the usefulness of alternatives in a single release, they can
>     still be used to provide flexibility in building the same package
>     across multiple distributions or releases, where a particular
>     dependency is met by differently named packages.
> 
> in 7.1.  However, it's hidden in a footnote.  Perhaps we should make it
> more prominant (and make it clear that it's normative), and tweak the
> wording.

Thanks, yeah, I missed that. I'll have a stab at a patch some time soon
(probably after debconf though)

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