On Wed, Aug 02, 2017 at 10:52:59AM -0400, Sean Whitton wrote: > control: tag -1 -patch > > Hello again Santiago, > > Some of us here at DebCamp have been reading your message and we're > still not sure of your intention. > > On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 09:41:26PM +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: > > Debian Policy 4.9 says: > > > > For some packages, notably ones where the same source tree is compiled > > in different ways to produce two binary packages, the build target > > does not make much sense. For these packages it is good enough to > > provide two (or more) targets (build-a and build-b or whatever) for > > each of the ways of building the package, and a build target that does > > nothing. The binary target will have to build the package in each of > > the possible ways and make the binary package out of each. > > > > Actually, no, I don't think that's "good enough". > > > > We should better avoid building packages as root (including fakeroot). > > We already have in policy both: > > (i) The build target must not do anything that might require root > privilege. > > (iI) The binary targets must be invoked as root [or fakeroot]. > > However, in the paragraph you quoted, there is a loophole: if the > build-a and build-b targets are not invoked by the build target, instead > directly invoked by the binary target, then (i) does not apply, and > indeed (ii) applies and they will be invoked as root. > > Is that why you want to delete that paragraph?
Yes, indeed! There is some background in libtool Bug #806654. It was a really strange build failure and it was not self-evident that the failure was the result of building as root. In this particular case, the package had only standard build-indep and build-arch targets, but it made me to read policy again and that's when I found about the "good enough" thing. Thanks.
