Source: debian-policy
Severity: wishlist
Hi,
I would like to propose that we drop or replace the following
recommendation in Policy:
"""
When a package has a configuration and build routine which takes a
long time, or when the makefiles are poorly designed, or when build
needs to run clean first, it is a good idea to touch build when the
build process is complete. This will ensure that if debian/rules build
is run again it will not rebuild the whole program. [11]
"""
(And related footnote about using "build-stamp" instead of "build").
I think a better solution would be to either drop the recommendation
entirely or keep it only for packages with this issue and
Rules-Requires-Root set to binary-targets. Either way would enable me
to move some debhelper hacks out of the "default" in future compat
level (at least for people with Rules-Requires-Root).
# Rationale:
As I understand it, the primary purpose behind this recommendation
comes from the need for running "debian/rules build && fakeroot
debian/rules binary" and thereby repeating the build step in some
cases (as listed in the text).
However, with the advent of Rules-Requires-Root many packages can now
be built with a direct "debian/rules binary" call and here the stamp
file is no longer useful for the above purpose.
Furthermore, debhelper need some complexity in implementing/emulating
this behaviour. This may sound "easy" until you try to implement this
"correctly" for the following sequence of debian/rules calls:
debian/rules build-arch
debian/rules binary-indep
This has resulted in debhelper using arcane trickery such as log files
(up to compat 9) and its own "stamp-log" (compat 10+). Both
techniques have their limitations and causes frustrations for people
that has a "well-behaving" upstream build system as they have to work
around debhelper's trickery.
Notely, this trickery prevents you from hacking on the upstream parts
and use "dpkg-buildpackage -b -nc -uc -us" to reduce the build times
for subsequent builds. You would have to add some rm -f calls to
delete "internal debhelper state files" as well between each
dpkg-buildpackage call.
Thanks,
~Niels
