[krbdev.mit.edu #6561] No option to only build client and libs

[Russ Allbery via RT]

"ohnobinki at ohnopublishing.net via RT" <rt-comment at krbdev.mit.edu> writes:
> Russ Allbery via RT wrote:
>> "ohnobinki at ohnopublishing.net via RT" <rt-comment at krbdev.mit.edu> 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 at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>