[debhelper-devel] Bug#781370: debhelper: Should allow for something like override_dh*-common in addition to -arch and -indep

[Sven Joachim]

On 2017-02-18 16:48 +0000, Niels Thykier wrote:

> Robert Luberda:
>> Niels Thykier pisze:
>> Hi,
>> 
>>>
>>> Thanks for your suggestion.
>>>
>>> However, I must admit I am not entirely convinced about the idea.  I
>>> sort of see where you are coming from, but I do not see why this cannot
>>> trivially be solved by the current interface and make target dependencies.
>> 
>> Yes, one can do something like in debian/rules:
>> 
>> install-common:
>>   ...
>> override_dh_auto_install-arch: install-common
>>   ...
>> override_dh_auto_install-indep: install-common
>>   ...
>> 
>> but this has the disadvantage of install-common being run twice, which
>> obviously can be work-arounded by using timestamp file:
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>
> Couldn't this be "easily" fixed by dh calling make with both override
> targets at the same time and let "make" use its dependency ordering to
> sort out the rest?

This might work for dh_auto_install, but certainly not for
dh_auto_configure.  Having worked on a package the other day where I
needed different overrides for dh_auto_configure in the -arch and -indep
cases, I dare say that it would likely spell disaster for quite a few
packages.  They would run two instances of ./configure with the same
build directory in parallel which cannot be any good.

The reason for having different configure flags in the -arch and -indep
cases is usually that the latter enables more features for building
documentation.  It is quite crucial that the -indep override is run
_after_ the -arch override in such cases if both are run.

Cheers,
       Sven