Hi,

debian-installer-netboot-images currently violates Debian Policy by
fetching debian-installer images over the network during install - see
bug#807168.

I believe¹ that debian-installer produces those pieces needed by
debian-installer-netboot-images, and suspect that providing in a binary
package the pieces needed for debian-installer-netboot-images could (at
least partially) solve bug#807168.

This bug marked important (not wishlist) as bug#807168 is RC.


Regards,

 - Jonas

¹ See https://lists.debian.org/20151111164804.GE26101@mraw.org and
surrounding thread.
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Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> writes:
binaries for all architectures.  To get these as build-dependencies we
would need cross-arch build-deps which we don't have so far.

Alternatively building a subset of arch:all packages on every
architecture would also work, but that would require (at least) support
for the buildd network building arch:all packages on package-specific
architectures ("Build-Architecture-Indep" might find relevant threads).

Ansgar

Quoting Ansgar Burchardt (2015-12-07 14:50:32)

Sorry, but I don't understand the requirement to change infrastructure.
I think I understand how such infrastructure change can be beneficial
for more complex issues, and then also could serve for a more elegant
solution to this issue, but as I see it debian-installer can (today,
with current infrastructure) build binary arch-all package
debian-installer-netboot-parts-amd64 on amd64,
debian-installer-netboot-parts-arm64 on arm64, and so on.

What am I missing?

 - Jonas

Quoting Jonas Smedegaard (2015-12-07 15:13:51)

....and then right when I hit "send", it occured to me: arch-independent
packages cannot be built on specific archs only (which is exactly what
you already wrote, in slightly different words).  I understand the
problem now.

 - Jonas

Hi,

Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> (2015-12-07):

You do realize that debian-installer suffers from the very same issue,
right?

Mraw,
KiBi.

Quoting Cyril Brulebois (2015-12-07 15:49:42)

It does not surpise me, but I didn't know for certain, as I am not
knowledgeable about the inner workings of debian-installer.

Is this Policy violation already tracked as a bug to (eventually) fix?

 - Jonas

That's not quite right.

When the debian-installer src package is built it downloads udebs which
are assembled into the installer images - this can't be avoided because
installing the udebs will most likely break the build environment.  It
also downloads some debs which are not installed, but used as a source
of parts for the installer like kernel, glibc etc.

As far as I am aware, the binary package does nothing in the way of
fetching images during install.  YMMV though as I've never needed to
install it due to the source build building the actual installer images.
 My understanding is that it only provides the scripts and configs used
for building debian-installer, so presumeably one could install it and
use it to build the installer image.

I think this could be refiled "Not a Bug", but YMMV... I'm not a DD so
what do I know.

Hi,

what do you mean by that? Source packages like cross-gcc-4.9-armhf *do* have
cross-arch build-deps. Were you talking about missing support in britney to
properly transition source packages with cross-arch build-deps? Is there a bug
about this open somewhere?

Thanks!

cheers, josch

cross-gcc-4.9-armhf doesn't get built by the buildd network, see

  https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=cross-gcc-4.9-armhf
  https://buildd.debian.org/status/logs.php?pkg=cross-gcc-4.9-armhf&arc
h=i386

The package also cannot migrate to testing as cross-arch binary
dependencies are not supported by britney, see [1].  If I recall
correctly, britney doesn't ensure that build-deps can be satisfied (a
missing feature).

Ansgar

  [1] https://release.debian.org/migration/testing.pl?package=cross-gcc
-4.9-armhf

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=770925

Stalled since debconf. Although that's actually the wanna-build code,
rather than britney. We've been waiting for w-b to be implemented
before we could sensibly worry about britney.

But time is getting short if we are to have this working this release.

Aurelien - can we help move this along?

Wookey

Sorry about that. I'll try to work again on it. 3 out of 5 patches have
already been merged, the two others has issues and need to be reworked.
It might help if you or someone else can provide updated patches
addressing the issues.

Aurelien