Researching Build-Depends-Indep (Was: Build-Depends-Indep dependencies)
On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 7:18 PM, Bernd Zeimetz <bzed@debian.org> wrote:
>>> Of course you are still welcome to update packages, please send the according
>>> patches to me and I'll apply them.
Ok. I can send you patch right away, but I failed to understand what
Build-Depends-Indep need. Mind correcting my findings below, so that I
can put them in Wiki for future reference?
debian/control
...
Build-Depends - lists all packages required to build the package
('build' target in debian/rules). These packages are also removed when
'clean' target from debian/rules is executed.
Build-Depends-Indep - lists all packages required to build
architecture independent package out of given source ('build-indep'
target in debian/rules).
In practice Build-Depends-Indep is useless, because:
1. If 'build-indep' is present, then 'build' target in debian/rules
should depend on it (and builder that detects this dependency should
fetch all Build-Depends packages anyway) [1]
2. If 'build' target doesn't depend on 'build-indep' target then
'clean' target will leave Build-Depends-Indep garbage, because it
cleans only files produced during 'build' stage [1]
3. The Build-Depends-Indep list could be useful to avoid installing
some dependencies when building architecture dependent packages (that
are built using 'build-arch' target of debian/rules).
But package builders are unable to detect 'build-arch' target, and
therefore it is never invoked [2]
[1] 4.9 Main building script: debian/rules
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html#s-debianrules
[2] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/footnotes.html#f22
--
anatoly t.
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