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

[ohnobinki@ohnopublishing.net via RT]

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. Gentoo could add support
 to their buildscripts to patch your buildsystem so that it could
conditionally compile sources. Gentoo could also just delete installed
binaries that the user doesn't want installed. However, both of these
methods are incorrect ways of addressing a problem with mit-krb5's
buildsystem: its lack of conditional building/installation.

Gentoo does not support users just compiling their own software and
manually installing it. This is not a good way to manage software.
However, in Gentoo, users are encouraged and mostly required to compile
software locally using ebuilds which are similar in principle to
specfiles (any redhat users?) and use a package manager. Just as many
distributions maintain patches against packages, Gentoo applies patches
to mit-krb5 before it is compiled and installed. For some packages
(including mit-krb5), there are patches that add missing functionality
to buildsystems (sometimes in Gentoo-specific ways, but this bug is not
an example of that).

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. This would also ease the
job of other distribution which mangle this package anyways.

-- 
binki