[Debian-ports-devel] Bug#852215: FTBFS on non-release architectures

[James Clarke]

On 22 Jan 2017, at 16:09, Julien Cristau <jcristau at debian.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 16:03:20 +0000, James Clarke wrote:
>> Package: debian-installer
>> Version: 20170112
>> Severity: wishlist
>> Tags: patch
>> X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-ports-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org
>> 
>> Hi,
>> As you know, debian-installer does not build on non-release
>> architectures, since it tries to build for stretch. Some architectures
>> also have some of the needed udebs in the unreleased suite, such as
>> sparc-utils on sparc64. The attached patch lets me build on sparc64 even
>> after a `dch --release`, and I would assume on other ports architectures
>> too. Is this something you would consider applying?
> 
> Pulling packages from unreleased into main sounds like a bad idea, those
> architectures would better have their own unreleased and
> differently-versioned debian-installer IMO.

It's still main, just unreleased/main rather than unstable/main. It may not be
ideal, but 1. it has no effect on release architectures 2. the one-off change
means porters don't have to keep a fork of debian-installer updated, which is
effectively how it is now, and that's clearly not working out very well either
given the lack of installer images for most ports. I've re-Cc'ed
debian-ports-devel; perhaps others have ideas for how to resolve this.

Regards,
James