[xml/sgml] xerces packages and arm: opinions sought

[Jay Berkenbilt]

Please take a couple of minutes to look at this and reply.... this has
to be resolved quickly with the upcoming freeze.  Thanks. :-)

The latest versions of xerces23, xerces24, and xerces25 are not
transitioning into sarge because they are unable to be built on arm.
The reason that they can't build on arm is that they are stuck in
dep-wait waiting for icu28 which segfaults building on arm.  The
maintainer of icu28 has decided to just omit arm from his architecture
list, stating that there are no arm systems to which DDs have shell
access.  Either way, I'm not a DD (though my NM application is moving
forward slowly), and I don't have access to an arm system to help
debug this.

This leaves me with two choices that I know of: either re-upload
xerces packages dependent upon an older version of icu (undesirable)
or exclude arm from the xerces architecture list as well.

Which option do people thing is better?

If I go with the option of removing arm support, is there a better way
of doing this than hard-coding a list of architectures equal to all
except arm?  Then what happens when amd64 gets added?

Basically, I feel that I'm stuck in a no-win situation and would
welcome any advice.  There were other changes in the most recent
xerces uploads that would be nice to have in sarge.  Thanks!

-- 
Jay Berkenbilt <ejb@ql.org>
http://www.ql.org/q/