Comment 3 for bug 64501

Hi,

> No, it's code that can be used by emulators like qemu, that's why
> it's an all package, there's existing practice for this, and the

No. The emulator is still a ppc processor (albeit a software
implementation of it). The Architecture: field specifies the cpu
architecture(s) for which binaries have to be generated, which is
only powerpc in this case. Otherwise we could just as well have no
Architecture: field. Afterall qemu can also emulate an i386 processor, so
you can always run the i386 binary, no matter what architecture you're
using.

> problem comes from a deficiency in the source format, that does
> not allow to specify that an all package needs a specific building
> environment (or arch).
>

No. The problem is that cross compiling is not covered by debian yet.
The solution is to make debian cross compiler aware, not to hack around
the problem by declaring every package Architecture: all.

> The only thing I can do is fail gracefully with a message if the
> environment, be it native or a cross toolchain, is not the
> apropropriate.

That defeats the purpose of build dependencies. The whole idea of having
build dependencies is that the buildds know what's required to build a
package instead of just trying and see what happens.

Cheers,

Peter (p2).