[buildd-tools-devel] Make alternative build-depends work on backports buildds (was: Give back ktorrent in squeeze-backports)

[Modestas Vainius]

Hello,

On antradienis 26 Liepa 2011 22:16:17 Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> > I would like to maintain a list of Build-Depends which would work on both
> > sid/wheezy and squeeze. Due to changes in the qt4-x11/qtwebkit packaging,
> > I add:
> > 
> > libqtwebkit-dev | libqt4-dev (<< 4:4.7.0)
> > 
> > to Build-Depends. libqtwebkit-dev is for sid/wheezy while libqt4-dev (<<
> > 4:4.7.0) is for squeeze. Sure I could probably fix this by removing
> > alternative build-depends but maybe sbuild could be configured/upgraded
> > to handle these alternatives dependencies on backports buildds properly?
> > Or is it a very unresonable request and why?
> 
> We will only consider the first alternative, so that we have
> reproducible results.
> 
> > Since sbuild 0.61.0 dominates on the buildds, you can fix the problem by
> > adding "$resolve_alternatives = 1" to ~/.sbuildrc. The changelog entry
> > suggests doing the same so it is a very good idea to add it in general. I
> > have
> 
> > tested this solution and I can confirm that it works fine with 0.61.0:
> I wonder why they're not all using the same version.
> 
> But we have always decided to do it this way, and there was a
> thread about it like a few months ago, probably around the time
> 0.61.0 got released.

I was not able to find the thread, but I still wish you would reconsider this 
for backports. I understand why it is better not to do it for unstable or even 
experimental.

> > Alternatively, sbuild 0.62.5-1 works well on my system without any
> > further tweaks (because aptitude resolver is smarter). So you can also
> > upgrade sbuild to the later version to fix the problem (this helps since
> > libqtwebkit-dev does not exist in squeeze as per changelog). Still
> > adding "$resolve_alternatives = 1" does not hurt.
> 
> If you want to make the buildds use 0.62, someone is going to need
> to put time in it to test that it actually works on the buildds.
> 
> I'm also not sure we want to use the aptitude resolver in that
> case.

At the moment, no other resolver can reasonably pull off "install from non-
default repository only and only if dependency is not satisfiable in the 
default repository", which is essential for both experimental and backports. 
You don't expect me to sign off the plan which you would bring experimental 
and backports autobuilding to the stone age it was before, do you?

I guess sbuild maintainers should know that smarter aptitude "A | B" 
resolution is not appropriate for Debian buildds and might be a showstopper 
for upgrading buildds to >= 0.62 ...

-- 
Modestas Vainius <modax at debian.org>
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