Bug#747392: gtk+3.0 has a cycle build-depency on itself

[Helmut Grohne]

Hi Michael,

On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 06:04:40PM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
> On Thu, 08 May 2014 10:48:53 +0200 Emilio Pozuelo Monfort
> <pochu at debian.org> wrote:
> > On 08/05/14 10:41, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote:
> > > Hard to break it unless we disable the test suite, but you can do that when
> > > bootstrapping.
> > 
> > Perhaps we can disable the test suite when on stage1. Would that work?
> 
> So, while the (current) unbuildability of src:gtk+3.0 on arch:all
> (#824999 etc) is certainly related and that's why I orginally merged
> those bugs, I've decided to unmerge this particular bug again to track
> our process in improving bootstrapping support in src:gtk+3.0.
> 
> As Emilio mentioned, the adwaita-icon-theme build dependency is required
> to successfully run the test suite.
> With the attached patch, those build dependencies are marked as
> "<!nocheck>", so building with
> DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nocheck (and DEB_BUILD_PROFILES=nocheck) would make it
> possible to skip installing the build-dependencies and not running "make
> check".
> 
> Helmut, is this the correct approach or would you prefer if we marked
> the build-dependencies as <!stage> and guard the "make check" run
> debian/rules with a

TL;DR: Please go ahead with your patch as is.

I believe that your patch is superior to adding a stage1 profile. My
experience is that requirements for stages change pretty quickly. In two
years, it'll be hard to figure out why it was added and what should be
part of it, because the interaction of multiple packages is what defines
the stage.

In contrast, your approach to mark those dependencies with <!nocheck> is
clearly defined and in two years, we will still know what it means and
it will be easy to determine whether it still works. What might be
forgotten is why it was added, but that's harmless: If someone runs into
the cycle again, tools will tell that this profile breaks the cycle (if
things didn't change).

For a longer reasoning, please refer to the thread starting at
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/04/msg00381.html. There I
argue why I think that stage profiles should go away as much as
possible.

Helmut