On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 02:37:21PM +0200, Yann Dirson wrote:
> Package: debian-policy
> Version: 3.5.6.1
> Severity: wishlist
>
> The problem
> ===========
>
> The Build-Depends-Indep feature only refers to tools used by the
> binary-indep target, whereas a number of packages make use, in the
> "indep" part of the build rule, of specific tools (mostly, dsssl or
> xsl processors). Since there is only one "build" target, it is not
> possible to make those tools part of the Build-Depends-Indep list, and
> those tools are launched by every run of the build-daemon, even when
> the result files (eg. docs) are only included in an arch-indep package.
>
> Not only this wastes CPU time on the build daemons (openjade, for one,
> is quite resource-hungry), but it causes problems on archs where those
> tools required only for arch-indep stuff have not been ported yet.
>
> As an example, the "bigloo" package needs "scribe" to build its docs.
> However, "scribe" build-depends on "bigloo". When scribe became
> functionnal on i386 I activated the build of the docs, but now bigloo
> can only be built on packages where scribe is working.
>
>
> A solution
> ==========
>
> We could standardize a "build-indep" rule (and, possibly, its
> build-arch counterpart, although I'm not sure this one would be
> useful), and allow binary-indep to depend on build-indep only.
>
> For backwards compatibility, in packages making use of this, "build"
> would be required to depend on "build-indep". For packages that do
> not need this extra flexibility, the build-indep target could just
> depend on the build target[1].
>
> Autobuilders would run "debian/rules build-indep" instead of
> "debian/rules build" when the standards-version of the package is
> greater or equal to the 1st version of the policy that requires
>
>
> [1] This, however, introduces an inconsistency: in some cases we have
> "build: build-indep", in others we have "build-indep: build". This
> could be made more consistent by requiring "build: build-indep", but
> then either we have "build-indep" as the primary name of the former
> "build" rule (which would not be as accurate), or we could have some
> "build-all" target on which both "build" and "build-indep" (which
> would complicate stuff, maybe with no good reason)
>
>
>
> Do you think this is solid enough to be turned into a policy
> ammendement ? Would anyone second this ?
You are correct, and it was inadvertantly left out of the original
proposal. See #141307.
Julian
--
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Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, Queen Mary, Univ. of London
website: http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~jdg/
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see: http://people.debian.org/~jdg/
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