[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#818505: sortmerna FTBFS on !x86

[Adam Borowski]

On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 05:32:31PM +0200, Gert Wollny wrote:
> On Sun, 2016-03-27 at 14:49 +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> > You're not allowed to use -msse2 on i386 either, unless for a code
> > path that's run conditionally on runtime.
> 
> Actually, "not allowed" it not the right expression, "discouraged"
> would be correct. If upstream requires sse2 then not enabling it would
> mean that all users of i386 would not have access to this software,
> even though one can assume that the majority uses hardware that is sse2
> capable. 
[...]
> I think this discussion could be helpful (linking to the conclusion of
> the maintainer): 
> 
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/09/msg00666.html

Yeah, if you include this:

# Given all the opinions expressed on the list (thanks!), I have decided
# to keep the i386 package and make it display an explicit error message
# at runtime if there is no SSE2 support in the processor.

Ie, as long as it's handled in a more graceful way than dumping core.

An alternative to detecting non-SSE2 at runtime would be doing this in
preinst and aborting installation.

It might be also good to make a "sse2-support" package as mentioned in the
thread Gert linked to to reduce duplication of such detection logic.  Please
say so if you think this is a good idea.

-- 
A tit a day keeps the vet away.