[Python-modules-team] Bug#818115: turn python-sphinx into an arch:any package

[Helmut Grohne]

Hi Dmitry,

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 07:17:07PM +0300, Dmitry Shachnev wrote:
> So are you also interested in me making Sphinx architecture:any?

I'm still kinda split about this. I discussed this with Guillem Jover
and Ian Jackson at length to avoid that step and still don't like it.

> Do you have any use cases where the documentation should be built in
> build-arch target, rather than build-indep (which is only run for arch-indep
> builds)?

Unfortunately, yes. python-sphinx has ~700 build-rdeps. We can simply
under approximate those that need python-sphinx during build-arch by
ignoring all packages that build architecture independent packages. That
leaves at least 25 affected packages:

axe-demultiplexer buildbot cvxopt lava-dispatcher liblognorm mayavi2
minieigen mydumper pathspider portabase py-postgresql pyalsaaudio
pynifti python-brainstorm python-chaco python-enable python-prctl
python-srp python-traits salmon squirrel3 trafficserver tsung urwid
vmdebootstrap

Of these, liblognorm is a high popcon package that specifically fails
cross building, because its python-sphinx dependency is cross
unsatisfiable.

If we can avoid turning python-sphinx Arch:any, then I'm all for it. So
which route shall we pursue now? I basically see three:
 * Split documentation packages out of the above.
 * Turn python-sphinx arch:any and annotate python-sphinx dependencies
   with :native.
 * Change dependency resolution in general. Update dpkg, apt, dose3. For
   instance allowing :native annotations on Arch:all packages would
   suffice.

Indeed, I do like moving documentation to Arch:all packages, but I'm not
sure we want even more small binary packages.

Helmut