Bug#525935: Bug#403246: [buildd-tools-devel] Bug#403246: Still occurs

[Robert Millan]

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 01:24:26PM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 02:03:10PM +0200, Sylvestre Ledru wrote:
> 
> > Just a quick update to confirm that this bug still exists. See: #525935
> 
> Thanks.  We still haven't yet had any proposed patches to the
> dependency resolver to correctly support alternative build dependencies.
> Currently support is extremely poor.  This is partly because the
> whole idea of alternative build-deps would result in non-deterministic
> builds.

Perhaps a solution would be for packages to specify two Build-Depends fields:

 A- One that defines which dependencies are essential for build to work

 B- One that defines which dependencies are expected to be present in
    official builds

Then maintainers and buildds must satisfy B, while backporters can satisfy
A and try to satisfy as much as possible from B.

-- 
Robert Millan

  The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and
  how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we
  still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all."