Bug#860637: mkosi: FTBFS on i386: help2man: can't get `--help' info from ./mkosi

[Lucas Nussbaum]

retitle 860637 mkosi: arch:all, but builds only on amd64 and arm64
severity 860637 wishlist 
thanks

On 20/04/17 at 07:36 +0200, Andreas Henriksson wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 04:58:00PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> [...]
> > Don't known the i686 architecture.
> [...]
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> While I'm not very familiar with mkosi I guess I should have understood
> from the "legacy free" description that i386 "obviously" isn't supported:
> 
> if platform.machine() == "x86_64":
>     GPT_ROOT_NATIVE = GPT_ROOT_X86_64
> elif platform.machine() == "aarch64":
>     GPT_ROOT_NATIVE = GPT_ROOT_ARM_64
> else:
>     sys.stderr.write("Don't known the %s architecture.\n" % platform.machine())
>     sys.exit(1)
> 
> http://sources.debian.net/src/mkosi/1-1/mkosi/#L52
> 
> 
> So apparently this isn't valid (even though the code itself builds no
> architecture-specific binaries, it's still not arch-independent):
> 
> Architecture: all
> 
> http://sources.debian.net/src/mkosi/1-1/debian/control/#L18

It is valid: there's no way to say: "this package builds only arch:all
binaries, but must be built on $SET_OF_ARCHS".

I filed those bugs because some of them might indicate serious breakage
on i386. In the present case, there's not much we can do.

I'm downgrading to wishlist and retitling: it's probably a good idea to
keep a trace of this in the BTS to avoid additional bugs getting filed.

Lucas