On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 11:10:54AM +0100, Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues wrote: > Source: debian-policy > Version: 4.6.0.1 > Severity: normal > X-Debbugs-Cc: jo...@debian.org > > Hi, > > currently, footnote [1] of ยง7 states: > > > While Build-Depends, Build-Depends-Indep and Build-Depends-Arch permit > > the use of alternative dependencies, these are not normally used by the > > Debian autobuilders. To avoid inconsistency between repeated builds of a > > package, the autobuilders will default to selecting the first > > alternative, after reducing any architecture-specific restrictions for > > the build architecture in question. While this may limit the usefulness > > of alternatives in a single release, they can still be used to provide > > flexibility in building the same package across multiple distributions > > or releases, where a particular dependency is met by differently named > > packages. > > There are multiple problems with this footnote: > > 1. "they are not normally used by the Debian autobuilders" should > instead be "they are never used by the Debian autobuilders" or it > should state when they are used and when they are not
If the base system on top of which the build-dependencies are to be installed already include one of the alternative then it is used in preference to the others. Cheers, -- Bill. <ballo...@debian.org> Imagine a large red swirl here.
