Bug#810762: debuild: shouldn't call dpkg-architecture for source-only builds

[Guillem Jover]

Control: reassign -1 dpkg-dev
Control: retitle -1 dpkg-buildpackage: Do not call dpkg-architecture on -S -nc
Control: severity -1 wishlist

Hi!

On Mon, 2016-01-11 at 21:06:12 -0500, James McCoy wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 05:33:03PM -0700, Neil Mayhew wrote:
> > I'm using debuild -S to create a source package. debuild calls
> > dpkg-architecture, which in turn tries to call gcc and shows an error.
> > I shouldn't need gcc to build a source package.
> > 
> > The variables set by dpkg-architecture aren't used in a sourceonly build, so
> > the call to dpkg-architecture should be inside the block that uses its
> > results.

Actually you do need them! Because a source only build requires
running the «debian/rules clean» target, which also requires checking
whether the Build-Depends are satisfied.

> debuild is just a wrapper around dpkg-buildpackage, and is in the
> process of becoming an even thinner wrapper than it currently is.
> 
> dpkg-buildpackage exhibits the same behavior, so you're better off
> seeing if that's something the dpkg folks (Cc'ed) think need fixing.

If one runs «dpkg-buildpackage -S -nc» then it might make sense to not
pre-compute the arch variables, I've only skimmed over the code and it
might be fine, but I'd have to check for any hidden assumptions in the
code. I'm reassigning it to dpkg-dev, although this also might need
quite some code reshuffling, because other parts of the code will end
up calling gcc if they need any of the arch values.

Thanks,
Guillem