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

[Felipe Sateler]

Control: retitle -1 mkosi: works only on amd64 and arm64
Control: severity -1 important

On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 3:20 AM, Lucas Nussbaum <lucas at debian.org> wrote:
>
> 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.

This actually means mkosi is unusable in all but amd64 and arm64.
Patching it to support creating non-image formats (directory and tar)
is easy (just delay the GPT_ROOT_NATIVE detection until needed).
Supporting more architectures fully requires more work.

I'm not sure this warrants a freeze exception. I'll focus on fixing
this upstream.

-- 

Saludos,
Felipe Sateler