[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#724711: insighttoolkit4: Please add arm64 to the architecture list

[Wookey]

Source: insighttoolkit4
Followup-For: Bug #724711

I recently discovered that graviton cannot build on x86 because of an
indirect build-dependency on libinsighttoolkit4-dev, which is only
built for x86. I was just going to ask for other architectures to be
enabled, as it is debian policy to enable all arches and fix issues as
and when. But then I found this bug from 7 years ago and it seems that
this is not just an oversight.

As Ed has already discovered 5 years ago, this package already builds
on arm64. There is at least one test failure, but that is not a good
reason to not build the package. If builds are attempted then everyone
can see the status and the logs and can fix issues in either the tests
or the code as required.

You said back in 2013 that build failures on non-x86 arches prevented
the package entering testing. That does not make much sense, because
build failures only prevent migration if the package has previously
built succesfully on that architecture. Arches where it has never
worked should not matter for the purposes of migrating. Perhaps there
was an arch where it worked once but stopped at some point? 2013
predates arm64 so enabling that now should not cause a migration
problem.

So, can you please enable arm64 builds too, and if there are any
problematic tests we will investigate and work out if the test or the
code needs fixing. People need this package, and we should be building
it for them.

I would encourage you to enable other arches too, for the reasons
given above (at least 64-bit arches) but maybe try arm64 first and see
how it goes.

Cheers

--
Wookey