On Fri, 2018-06-15 at 19:05:17 +0100, Sean Whitton wrote: > Sean Whitton writes ("Bug#846970: Patch to document Build-Indep-Architecture > field"): > > > +``Build-Indep-Architecture`` > > > +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Zooming out a bit: > > We do not normally add fields to Policy until they are already in use in > the archive. > > Looking at codesearch.debian.net reveals that only a single package is > actually using this field at present. I haven't checked, but presumably > the field is not supported by the Debian autobuilders. > > So I would like to suggest we just close this bug until those who would > actually be involved in implementing support for the field chime in to > say that it is needed, and exactly what's needed. This has been discussed multiple times over the years [D]. I still consider both the purpose of this field a workaround [W], and its name to be potentially very confusing [N]. :) Regarding the name, in addition to what I mention in [N], there's also the fact that we already have Build-<foo>-Indep and Build-<foo->-Arch. With the second being in a way a poor name, and while not Architecture, it would make adding Build-Indep-Arch.* less than ideal. I think a better approach for many of these cases might be <https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/Spec/FreestandingArches>, but I'd otherwise consider the more immediate and realistic cross-compiler option to be way preferable (even the variant of building the cross-compiler from within the package itself), than this field. And I'm saying this as one of the perpetrators that maintained and/or introduced many of the abominable packaging aberrations that abuse the Architecture field and semantics in that way, and would need of something like this. :) Thanks, Guillem [D] <…other earlier discussions omitted…> <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/02/msg00223.html>, <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/02/msg01125.html>. [W] <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2011/02/msg00534.html> [N] <https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/08/msg00810.html>