--- Brian Dessent wrote:
> Until about a month ago the Cygwin build process itself required > texi2html, even though it was not available in any current package, and > nobody objected. People building Cygwin have long been told to use > "make -k" so that doc building stuff doesn't cause the build to stop on > missing tools. For something that's tangential to the main > functionality of a package, I'd say it's not entirely critical that > every build tool be available in package form, especially if so noted in > the readme. > > Brian > There may be precedent, but it doesn't sound like good policy for most packages. I note that building of Cygwin itself is sort of a singular point - you can't use the normal tool chain - so it doesn't sound like a strong precedent to me. Comparison to Debian: when I download a Debian source package, apt-get can automate the installation of the build-depends, and at the end of the build, I should have the same exact binary package as is on the mirrors. And in fact Debian developers don't upload binary, they upload source. Build daemons build the binary semi-automatically. If the package fails to build, it can't be uploaded to a mirror. Now admittedly, Cygwin is not Debian, and does not enforce Debian policies and procedures. Nevertheless, I think the best policy for my Cygwin packages is that they build from source after installing all build-depends from Cygwin setup.exe. I think that is a reasonable and coherent policy, and intend to follow it where at all possible. I installed texi2html from Debian sarge into the Cygwin octave source tree, and modified the build script to use it - seems to have worked, although there are other problems to solve as well. So it appears my policy is workable in this case. Thanks for your thoughtful comments. JRP
