[pkg-php-pear] Question: handling arch-specific failures (i386)

[Robin Gustafsson]

Hi team,

I recently updated php-nesbot-carbon [1] to a new upstream version
(not uploaded yet) which alerted me to the fact that the package fails
to build on the i386 arch. The failures are caused by build-time tests
suffering from integer overflows and operations on dates on the wrong
side of Y2038, due to the whole 32-bit thing.

Any suggestions on what to do about this?
How is arch-specific failures like this normally handled for otherwise
arch-independent packages (like most PHP libraries)?

My main point of uncertainty, I guess, is whether this is a "real"
arch compatibility issue or just a limitation of the platform that the
user ought to be aware of already. If it's the second, the failing
tests could be skipped on platforms where PHP_INT_SIZE is too small,
but if it's the first, then this package should probably not even be
in i386.

I tried asking on debian-mentors [2], but so far I've received no
suggestions from there.

[1]: https://salsa.debian.org/php-team/pear/php-nesbot-carbon
[2]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2020/09/msg00269.html

Regards,
Robin