Hi Dirk, On Mon, Nov 04, 2024 at 04:26:23PM -0600, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: > On 4 November 2024 at 22:18, Helmut Grohne wrote: > | Source: gsl > | Version: 2.8+dfsg-4 > | Tags: patch > | User: debian-cr...@lists.debian.org > | Usertags: cross-satisfiability > | > | gsl cannot be cross built from source, because its dependencies on gcc > | and binutils cannot satisfied. They need "toolchain dependency cross > | translation" which has been unavailable until earlier this year. > > I read this paragraph three times and still do not understand. The > constraint was there for years, possibly a decade, and always satisfied.
I vaguely feared that and tried to cut down unnecessary detail, but evidently went too far. > What does "toolchain dependency cross translation" mean? What does it > change? If you depend on a compiler (including binutils), you currently are not precise what architecture you are compiling for. This used to be fine when we did native builds only as the implied architecture simply was the native one. Now when cross building, you mostly want to compile for the machine you are cross compiling for and sometimes want to compile for the machine you are building on (in order to run something compiled during build). This is an extra bit of information that was not needed earlier. Therefore, we will have to touch each and every dependency on a compiler in the archive and change it expressing this extra information. Roughly speaking the way forward is to append "-for-host" to the compiler package name for the cross compiler and "-for-build" when you want to compile a build tool to be run during build. Let me know if you want more detail and I'll expand. > (I did see posts from you on debian-science but I haven't followed super > closely ...) That's quite related. It's a deep topic and d-science just happens to be affected early, but it really affects more of Debian, which is why I originally posted it to d-cross@l.d.o and d-toolchain@l.d.o only. I'm glad for feedback, but I also understand if you want to skip that part. > Thanks, I think I will fold it in. We can do with with the versioned depends. I hope this is a typo and you meant s/with/without/. Helmut
