It has been suggested in bug #411520 that cdbs should be set up so that it preserves CFLAGS set in the environment. But I haven't found any clear specification about how debian/rules, being a makefile, should deal with environment variables.
The best I could find is Policy 10.1 which states that "the following compilation parameters should be used: CC = gcc CFLAGS = -O2 -g -Wall" (It doesn't say, "these variables should be set this way".) It appears, however, that hardly any package (containing C language code) explicitly sets CC, and I think it is certainly useful to be able to set a different CC in the environment. Yet at the same time most packages set CFLAGS explicitly, overriding anything that's there before. The language in the policy and various rules templates appear to encourage that. But as the submitter of #411520 stated, it could also be useful to be able to build a package with different compiler flags. What this might come down to is that most variable assignments in rules files should be changed from = to ?=. Since debuild and pbuilder and other tools exist that give pretty good control over the environment for "final" package builds, I don't think there is much of a risk in allowing that, but I think some consistent approach ought to be worked out. Comments? -- please CC me -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
