Bug#994008: debian-policy: Clarify relationship between source and binary packages' archive areas

[Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org>]

On Thu, 2021-09-09 at 12:48 -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
> > But source packages in main must also produce at least one binary
> > package in main[1].
> 
> Let's include that point in Policy.
> 
> > [1]: Probably with the default build profile if we care about corner
> >        cases.
> 
> Are we sure about this?  Is this a bug in current dak or a general
> problem with the semantics we're discussing?

We expect all packages uploaded to Debian to use the default build
profile (as a policy). Not doing so will probably cause various issues
(such as a binNMU reverting to the default profile thus changing the
package). So for the archive a binary only built in non-default build
profiles should just be ignored (for binary-NEW, choice of archive
area, ...) as it shouldn't appear in Debian; packages are free to do
whatever they want with build profiles.

This behavior was asked for in https://bugs.debian.org/913965

If we allowed packages to use non-default build profiles then we would
probably have to revisit this.

(I would expect this corner case to not happen in practice.)

> > I personally would prefer if we would avoid using this feature too much
> > if possible. It is simpler to understand when archive areas are self-
> > contained (IMHO). Outside Debian archive areas are used differently,
> > e.g., for different "branches" or similar; sources building binary
> > packages across multiple archive areas also find strange corner cases
> > now and then that are not handled correctly.
> 
> It would be good if we included in Policy the idea that for technical
> reasons, it is best to use separate source packages (only) when that is
> not otherwise too inconvenient.
> 
> I am not sure we have a consensus on avoiding using this feature for the
> sake of simplicity of understanding, so let's exclude that idea for now.

Sure, that seems reasonable enough.

Ansgar