Control: tags -1 wontfix
On Sat, 28 Mar 2015 09:20:49 +0100 Robert Luberda <rob...@debian.org> wrote:
> Package: debhelper
> Version: 9.20150101
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Hi,
>
> It would be nice if debhlper could have override_*-common target
> for stuff that is needed by both override_*-arch and override_*-indep
> (or alternatively it could run override_* even if override_*-arch/indep
> exist).
>
> A comment in /usr/bin/dh says that `mixing it [i.e.non-arch-specific
> override] with arch-specific overrides makes little sense', but in fact
> such a mix does have sense for at least two of my packages:
>
> - ispell that needs ./ispell binary, created by build-arch, in order to
> generate arch-indep dictionary packages.
>
> - afterstep that generally puts the documentation it generates into
> arch-indep afterstep-data, with an exception of a few files (with
> API documentation) that are installed in arch-dep libafterimage-dev.
>
> Regards,
> robert
>
> [...]
>
>
Hi,
Thanks for the request.
I have pondered on this and I have decided to decline this feature and
will be closing this issue.
As a mitigating factor, dh now supported the "execute_before_X" +
"execute_after_X" targets (along with -arch/-indep variants) which can
be used for a similar purpose (that is, use "execute_before_X" as the
"-common" and then override_X-{arch,indep} as before). I acknowledge it
is not a perfect solution and has its limitations.
However, I think this is a sufficiently good solution given how rare I
perceive this use case to be. I will be open to reconsider this
decision if there is evidence that at least 50 source packages in Debian
testing suffer from this issue, the limitations of my proposed solution,
and where the proposed target -common target seems like the proper
solution to their issue(s).
Using ispell as an example for how I think the work around should be
deployed:
execute_before_auto_build: debian/packages.stamp
<contents of the debian/build-common.stamp target>
And then remove the dependencies for the
override_dh_auto_build-{arch,indep} targets.
Likewise, for afterstep, I think "$(STAMP_DIR)/configure-dynamic.stamp"
could go into a new "execute_before_dh_auto_configure" target. Ditto
for "$(STAMP_DIR)/packages.stamp" and "execute_before_dh_auto_install".
Thanks,
~Niels
PS: I suspect that the override_dh_installdocs-arch target of ispell is
redundant. By the looks of it, this is what dh would do automatically
if that target was absent from debian/rules.
