Bug#990362: debian-policy: Obsolete advice on multiple builds

[Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 4.5.1.0

Hi,

In 4.9 "Main building script: debian/rules", we find the following
paragraph under the description "build (required)":

"""
> For some packages, notably ones where the same source tree is compiled in different ways to produce two binary packages, the build target does not make much sense. For these packages it is good enough to provide two (or more) targets (build-a and build-b or whatever) for each of the ways of building the package, and a build target that does nothing. The binary target will have to build the package in each of the possible ways and make the binary package out of each.

"""


I think the "binary target will have to build the package in each of the
possible ways" part is a remanent from the time Debian did *not* support
build-arch and build-indep.


A much better recommendation would be to have build-arch and build-indep
targets depend on the relevant build-a, build-b (etc.) targets to keep
the build out of the binary target.  Notably they are builds plus the
binary target *can* be run under (fake)root.

Thanks,
~Niels