Return-Path: Received: from smtp.stanford.edu (smtp3.Stanford.EDU [171.67.219.83]) by krbdev.mit.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id D5F1FCCA09 for ; Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:58:22 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.stanford.edu (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by localhost (Postfix) with SMTP id DA5AF1A0607 for ; Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:58:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.67.225.134]) by smtp.stanford.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id AA21E1A05FD for ; Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:58:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: by windlord.stanford.edu (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 7A47B2F405; Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:58:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Russ Allbery To: rt@krbdev.mit.edu Subject: Re: [krbdev.mit.edu #6561] No option to only build client and libs In-Reply-To: (rt-comment@krbdev.mit.edu's message of "Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:48:45 +0000 (UTC)") Organization: The Eyrie References: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.1 (gnu/linux) Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:58:21 -0700 Message-ID: <87skesxa5u.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii RT-Send-Cc: X-RT-Original-Encoding: us-ascii Content-Length: 2479 "ohnobinki@ohnopublishing.net via RT" writes: > Russ Allbery via RT wrote: >> "ohnobinki@ohnopublishing.net via RT" writes: >>> The distribution's task of making certain features of your package >>> optional is somewhat dependent on your buildsystem's support for such. >>> If every single distribution which packages mit-krb5 has to generate >>> and maintain its own patches to the mit-krb5 buildsystem to have >>> conditional building support, effort is wasted. Also, if your >>> buildsystem builds programs which the distribution isn't installed, >>> the user has to wait for those portions to be built. Thus, I think the >>> proper place to implement conditional building and installation is >>> within your buildsystem. >> I suspect this is a Gentoo-specific problem. For Red Hat and Debian at >> least, and I suspect for all distribution packaging that isn't based on >> the end-user compiling their own version of the software, there's no >> need to support building portions of the software. Building Debian >> packages or RPMs always builds all related packages, and then the user >> chooses which of those to install. > You do not understand what I am trying to say. I think that I do, but am addressing a more limited part of your point than I think you're realizing. You made the argument that "if every single distribution which packages mit-krb5 has to generate and maintain its own patches to the mit-krb5 buildsystem to have conditional building support, effort is wasted." I'm pointing out that the only distribution that is likely to care is Gentoo; this is not a useful feature for other distributions that don't use the approach that Gentoo takes to building software. That doesn't mean that your feature proposal is without merit, only that the scope of expected usage is somewhat smaller than I think your bug report reflected. > However, it is preferable to get things fixed upstream. I was submitting > this request here because its fix would benefit many users of mit-krb5. > And I was hoping that this change might trickle down so that Gentoo devs > could easily add an option to the ebuild to only build and install the > minimal set of libs and clients of mit-krb5. Of course. I think the question is whether it adds complexity to the build system that the Kerberos maintainers don't want to cope with. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)