On Tuesday 02 May 2006 13:42, Sven Luther wrote: > On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 12:14:30AM +0300, George Danchev wrote: > > Hello, > > > > I just discovered the fact that ara build-depends on a virtual package - > > ocaml-best-compilers. I'm not sure about the reasons we have been after > > to declared this in a such way, but this should give random failures > > imho. How are autobuilders supposed know which physical package(s) to > > install to satisfy the provision of ocaml-best-compilers. Seems it is far > > better to build-depend on ocaml-native-compilers or I'm missing something > > ? > > When, like in this case, there is only one real package providing the > virtual package, it is not really a virtual package we are facing, but more > an 'alias' of some kind.
And that only real package is the only choice available for of autobilders to go for. If this is the case then it is completely deterministic ;-) > This problem has been known since 2000 or so, and the buildd coders have > never been interested in solving the issue. I'm not sure that the problem is not solvable presently ;-) I searched a little bit and saw in xfree86-4.3.0.dfsg.1 source package from stable that it is fine to put arch-dependant stuff in Build-Depends. For example we can have this: Build-Depends: ocaml-native-compilers [alpha amd64 arm hppa i386 kfreebsd-i386 ia64 powerpc sparc], ocaml [ m68k mips mipsel powerpc s390 sh ] Even package (version) [ arch ] is recognized. Stefano, thanks for pointing the diff btw best and native compilers, I was quite sleepy yesterday night to guess what was exactly the case ;-) So, what do you think about setting Build-Depends this way ? > Right now, this is solved by having the buildd admins set the dependency by > hand, it seems they are more interested in boring repetitive work than > working on the code base. Hm, strange. They used to use Packages-arch-specific filelist to prevent not-for-us build on sertain arches, but I'm not sure how these things are handled presently. > This is in part because they don't come from a formal programming community > like the ocaml one, but are mostly perl hackers at the base, i believe. I'm also a moderate perl hacker ;-) But I also like strict languages like Objective Caml and Ada although I'm quite far from being fluent with them. > BTW, you do work on the EDOS project on dependency graphs and stuff like > that, right ? Do you have some insight on how this could be handled better > than it is done now ? I believe that it is Berke Durak and/or probably some other ocaml hackers behind the scene [1]. I'm not sure if they are related to any project at INRIA, but these guys are doing some really cool stuff. > I guess that with debian stagnating in its tools, > other distribs (like mandrake) will clearly take the forefront in a few > years. Debian needs some good competitors to evolve I believe ;-) [1] I just have this information from the Ara's home page at: http://ara.alioth.debian.org/ which is refering to http://ara.edos-project.org/ which is refering to http://brion.inria.fr/anla/ -- pub 4096R/0E4BD0AB 2003-03-18 <people.fccf.net/danchev/key pgp.mit.edu> fingerprint 1AE7 7C66 0A26 5BFF DF22 5D55 1C57 0C89 0E4B D0AB -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
