On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 11:38:15AM -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> It is possible that the build *and* host require python 3.4.
>
> The reason being that when cross-testing glibc with the test-wrapper-env
> script the build system may execute a command on the host system to
> run python (which is usually implemented as a ssh to a target system
> with a shared mounted filesystem).
>
> There are at least several pretty-printing tests which use python, and
> require PExpect, and those run on the host during testing via the
> test-wrapper-env abstraction.
>
> I've started a new thread of discussion here, but in general my expectation
> has always been that host and build environments need the same set of tools.
>
> https://www.sourceware.org/ml/libc-alpha/2018-10/msg00395.html
I should have thought of testing indeed. In Debian, we tend to turn
testing off completely for a bootstrap and then rebuild the world (using
the bootstraped packages) with testing enabled. This is done, because it
removes a pile of dependencies and makes the problem a bit more
manageable. So as long as tests can be disabled (preferably without
changing the build result in terms of reproducible builds[1]), the cross
bootstrap won't be impacted.
In any case, requiring Python 3 for testing does not seem to be a new
thing. The dependency is already there and it is not causing problems
now. So from a cross bootstrap pov, I'm fine here.
Helmut
[1] We also use reproducible builds to validate cross buildt packages
against natively built (with tests enabled) ones.
