On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 10:05:42AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Wouter Verhelst <wou...@debian.org> writes: > > > -policy: this is a question that has come up before > > (https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/12/msg00470.html is another > > example that springs to mind, but I'm pretty sure there are more), so I > > think we should document in Policy that a) buildd only looks at the > > first dependency in alternative build-dependencies, and b) why this is > > the case. > > Policy already says: > > While Build-Depends, Build-Depends-Indep and Build-Depends-Arch permit > the use of alternative dependencies, these are not normally used by > the Debian autobuilders. To avoid inconsistency between repeated > builds of a package, the autobuilders will default to selecting the > first alternative, after reducing any architecture-specific > restrictions for the build architecture in question. While this may > limit the usefulness of alternatives in a single release, they can > still be used to provide flexibility in building the same package > across multiple distributions or releases, where a particular > dependency is met by differently named packages. > > in 7.1. However, it's hidden in a footnote. Perhaps we should make it > more prominant (and make it clear that it's normative), and tweak the > wording.
Thanks, yeah, I missed that. I'll have a stab at a patch some time soon (probably after debconf though) -- To the thief who stole my anti-depressants: I hope you're happy -- seen somewhere on the Internet on a photo of a billboard