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

[Roger Leigh]

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 04:05:09PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> 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.

I'm not sure that a separate type of Build-Depends field in the control
file is necessary.  Surely a build dependency is required or not required;
there isn't really a case in between where it /might/ be required, is
there?  (Excluding arch-specific, which is already catered for.)

Should backporters not simply alter the build-depends to be correct
in the backport environment, and/or backport any needed dependencies
if they can't be satisfied by older packages?

I, for example, keep separate debian and debian-backports branches
in a VCS so that such deviations can be easily tracked.


Regards,
Roger

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