[Debian-ports-devel] Bug#867674: RM: lava-dispatcher [alpha hppa m68k powerpcspe sh4 sparc64 x32] -- ANAIS; Obsolete version on specified ports

[James Clarke]

On Sat, Jul 08, 2017 at 01:20:30PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote:
> Package: ftp.debian.org
> Severity: normal
>
> The package switched to only certain ports after the 2016.6
> release in order to gain improved functionality. Version
> 2016.6 is now unusable and these binaries should be removed
> from the ports which are now unsupported upstream.
>
> alpha - 2016.6-1
> hppa  - 2016.6-1
> m68k  - 2016.6-1
> powerpcspe - 2016.6-1
> sh4   - 2016.6-1
> sparc64 - 2016.6-1
> x32   - 206.6-1
>
> All other architectures are correct and should remain using
> 2017.7-1 and subsequent releases.

Hi Neil,
Firstly, thanks for caring about ports! However, all these architectures
live on ftp.ports.debian.org, which is not under the control of the
normal FTP team, so this is the wrong place for the bug (I'm not aware
of an equivalent pseudo-package, so I've Cc'ed the debian-ports-devel
mailing list).

Secondly, as far as I can tell, the only reason given for the
architecture restrictions is in the changelog for 2016.6-2:

  * Align architecture list with guestfs support, also dropping armel

Looking at libguestfs, it's marked as linux-any. Yes, some architectures
have never built it successfully (generally due to build-deps, either
incorrectly specified or uninstallable), but just because it hasn't been
built somewhere doesn't mean you can't still sit in BD-Uninstallable
waiting for it. As a porter, I would much rather see the architecture
list set to linux-any (or even any if you think there's any chance it
could ever work on non-Linux), as otherwise it's not on our radar. So,
unless there's some other reason of which I am unaware, please revert
this change in the packaging.

Regards,
James