Bug#1065416: Bastian's offer in #1065416

Hello Stefano, Matthias, Andreas, and other committee members,

I apologise for taking so long to respond to this issue.  I missed the
beginning of it as I did not have much time for Debian in February and
March this year.  I've been aware of it in recent months it but until
today I had not gone back and read through the full conversation.

My answers below are mine alone.  I have not discussed this with other
team members and do not speak for them.

On Wed, 2024-09-04 at 15:30 +0200, Stefano Rivera wrote:
> Hello kernel maintainers,
> 
> While potential solutions to this bug are being discussed, would you
> please consider removing the Provides from linux-libc-dev?

I am open to doing so.

> They can be re-instated again later, in combination with the requested
> symlinks, or the binary package can be transitioned to
> cross-toolchain-base, or some other solution found. I would hope that we
> can figure out the future of this package, without leaving
> cross-building broken.
> 
> Last month, Sean asked you:
> 
> > In [1], Bastian proposes that Matthias <doko> take over the
> > linux-libc-dev binary package, building it from one of the crossbuilding
> > source packages he maintains.  Different people have been reading
> > Bastian's e-mail differently as to whether it was a serious proposal for
> > how to resolve the dispute, or just a rhetorical device Bastian was
> > using to make a point.
> > 
> > In any case, doko is among those who took the offer seriously.
> > 
> > In two messages written today, Bastian appears to say both that he
> > is okay with resolving the dispute that way, and also that he is not.
> > 
> > I am writing seeking some clarity.  What is the team consensus on this?
> > Is this something you are happy to do, would consider doing, or is it
> > off the table?  That would help us see where we are.

Since the Linux UAPI headers originate with Linux upstream, I think it
makes most sense for the linux source package to remain the primary
source for them in Debian.  If I understand correctly, no-one has
claimed that linux-libc-dev is causing problems other than through the
disputed Provides field.

I also don't see any convincing reason why linux-libc-dev and linux-
libc-dev-*-cross cannot continue to be built by different source
packages.  I recognise that there is some duplication that could be
avoided by building them together and having the -cross packages
contain only symlinks, but in my experience of cross-building for
embedded systems an extra few megabytes on the build system is in the
noise.

Kind regards,
Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings - Debian developer, member of kernel, installer and LTS
teams

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