[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#665021: nuitka: FTBFS: unsatisfiable build-dependencies: base-files (< 6.0) but 6.7 is to be installed

[Kay Hayen]

Hello Lucas,

>> As to deterministic, are you implying that the choice is not made in
>> a deterministic way? It probably is just that somebody or something
>> hates it when not all choices are valid.
>
> If you use alternative build-deps, two builds of the same package at
> the same time might produce different binary packages (and it could
> happen that the i386 and amd64 packages are built against different
> dependencies, for example). That is not something desirable.

As you can imagine, I would prefer to use optional build-deps and use 
the alternative one only as a stop-gap.

The selected version of base-files is carefully selected to achieve the 
desired effect, i.e. no Debian this package builds on has both, so there 
cannot be indeterminism at all.

Yet, I would also like to understand (feel free to ignore my desire to 
learn, and notice how it cannot apply to the Nuitka package as state 
above): Why (in a chroot, mind you) if both alternatives are available, 
a random one would be picked. Is there really a "random()" call in dpkg.

Or was this just a general statement relating to non-chroot builds, 
where it clearly will be true that if the second one is already 
installed, it will change the result.

Yours,
Kay