Hi Emilio, On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 11:47:35PM +0100, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote: > To clarify: if this one package is blocking your cross-build efforts (which I > appreciate), I can do it. I don't want to end up doing this, then those two > other packages, then some more stuff... Instead, this should be fixed in the > right place.
I hesitated quite a bit before filing this nmu request, precisely because I know that it means busywork for you. These skews are kinda frequent and mostly come and go away. Just zlib is special here in that it has a low upload frequency combined with a high impact (1/4 of the archive). I do agree that a better solution should be found. I just don't see any good solutions that could be applied. There are basically two approaches: * Whenever you nmu a Multi-Arch: same package, nmu it for all architectures. This obviously wastes buildd resources somewhat, but we know that it works. The nmu tooling would need better support for automatically handling this correctly in all cases. * Teach dpkg to coinstall different binNMU versions. I know that Guillem Jover has been slowly working towards this (e.g. by trying to turn packaging more declarative), but there are more problems outside the scope of dpkg. Multi-Arch: same requires that shared files must have exactly matching content. If one rebuilds a package with differently versioned dependencies, we risk content changes in shared files. This is not a theoretical issue (e.g. formerly libxdmcp). So even if dpkg supported this mode, we'd get binNMUs that are broken from a Multi-Arch perspective and would have to nmu them again. nmuing just zlib has a significant impact on cross build qa. I do not see nmuing Multi-Arch skews as a frequent operation. Towards the end of the freeze we should consider nmuing all remaining skews in one block. The reproducible builds folks likely also want nmus, so maybe we can consolidate them. So do you think this request is reasonable now? Either way, let's not discuss it further. Either nmu or not and close this bug. Helmut
