Bug#986527: sagemath: FTBFS: /<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/sage/src/bin/sage: line 549: exec: cython: not found

[Julien Puydt]

Hi,

Le mardi 18 mai 2021 à 15:31 +0200, Jochen Sprickerhof a écrit :
> 
> * Julien Puydt <julien.puydt at gmail.com> [2021-05-18 07:56]:
> > 1) Upstream itself uses the testsuite in the sense of "shouldn't
> > have
> > too many failing tests", and it still allows to detect when a build
> > is
> > utterly broken, so we shouldn't disable it.
> 
> Debian doesn't necessarily need to do the same as upstream here.

Upstream manages to ship version with no error because they ship
hundreds of deps to an exact version for which they fitted the
testsuite to pass. We ship those deps as separate packages, because
they're actually not sagemath-specific [look at the list, it's pretty
telling : https://people.debian.org/~thansen/debian-sage-status.html ],
so we might not have the exact same version, and that's enough to
trigger artificial failures.

I don't think we'll ever hit zero. At least not while their testsuite
framework is so... so like it is.

If we keep it with an allowed error rate, we detect the package is
*really* broken before shipping ; if we don't, we detect it is broken
after shipping, because it hurts the users and they complain.

Sagemath is definitely not bug-free, the Debian package for it isn't
bug-free either, but it is working and useful to users, and this
(bringing useful software to users) is what Debian is about.

If I look at the title of this bug, I think "Oh, just patch
src/bin/sage so it calls cython3 and not cython" (see my message #20),
but if you look at the exchange, then it's not clear at all what the
problem actually is.

The buildd logs (
https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=sagemath&suite=bullseye
), John Cross (message #10), myself (message #25) and the triggered RB
rebuild (message #30) all conclude the package doesn't FTBFS.

I would like to fix the problem, but at that point, I have no clue what
it really is about...

JP