[Buildd-tools-devel] sbuild --auto-give-back / sbuild<>wanna-build interaction

[Michael Banck]

On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 11:38:44AM +0100, Florian Lohoff wrote:
> is there a reason why sbuild has a "wanna-build" dependency? As i
> understand sbuild in case its been run from buildd gives back packages 
> when they fail building due to problems of the build environment.

That is usually when sbuild doesn't even get to installing the
build-depends, or unpacking the source package fails, IME.

> I find this overly complicated to rebuild wanna-build invocations from
> multiple pieces of software etc. I found multiple problems with local
> wanna-builds in sbuild and buildd and fixed at least the buildd part.
> 
> My guess would be that a return code from sbuild wouldn't work because
> buildd hands out multiple packages at once to sbuild? Is this a real
> performance win on any platform? Compared to build time this shouldnt
> matter should it?

At least in the distant past, all buildds hammering buildd.debian.org
via SSH was a serious performance issue, so taking the packages to build
by batch was sensible.  These days, the buildds re-use a SSH connection
so this might not be an issue anymore.

Not sure whether there is any other rationale for that.

BTW, this list is very probably not read by the wanna-build/buildd
author, it's for the end-user version of sbuild in unstable (though
there is some effort underway to provide wanna-build/buildd as well)


Michael