Hi, when adding new general build profiles, we're supposed to consult with debian-devel. Thus I propose the "nogir" profile. This profile is supposed to skip building "gir*" packages containing typelib files.
Why? gobject-introspection is one of the few and high popcon components that poses resistant to cross compilation. gir packages are often added to existing source packages for e.g. libraries and their presence makes cross building fail. Often enough, these gir packages are not needed for a particular application, so skipping them would allow cross building the library. The profile also allows fixing cross build problems in packages shipping typelib files such that when we get a solution for typelib generation, those packages will not have other bugs. Precise scope There are two major ways to define this profile. 1. narrow and reproducible The profile inhibits generation of "gir*" packages. It does not affect other kinds of packages. As such, it cannot be applied to source packages that happen to not split out their typelib files to separate packages (libraries libcjs0 and libgjs0g as well as a few applications such as gnome-calculator or liferea). On the flip side, the profile is called "reproducible" and it can be mechanically validated for correctness using reproducible builds. 2. wide and unreproducible The profile inhibits the generation of typelib files and also disables packages that would become mostly empty as a result (such as gir* packages). This covers more use cases, but the profile no longer is reproducible. The first approach would cover 282 binary packages at present and the second approach would affect 21 additional packages. Given that the majority of those 21 packages are applications, I prefer the narrow approach. As such I propose the following addition: profile name: nogir content changes: N package set changes: Y description: Disable building packages containing mainly GObject introspection data If there are no objections to this, I'd like to get at least one reply from a pkg-gnome team member. Bear in mind that gnome packages may receive patches adding nogir profile support if this is accepted, so if you expect rejecting such patches, please speak up. Helmut
