Bug#797347: dpkg-gencontrol: option to exclude specific architectures

On 2026-06-07 Paul Gevers <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi,

> On Sun, 3 May 2026 13:52:20 +0200 Andreas Metzler <[email protected]> wrote:
> > is there a workaround for this nowadays?

> Yes, it's documented in dev-ref, section 5.12.1 [1] last bullet point:
> """
> When you can't support your package on a particular architecture, you
> shouldn't use the Architecture field to reflect that (it's also a pain to
> maintain correctly). If the package fails to build from source, you can just
> let it be and interested people can take a look at the build logs. If the
> package would actually build, the trick is to add a Build-Depends on
> `unsupported-architecture [the-not-supported-arch]`. The buildds will not
> build the package as the build dependencies are not fulfilled on that arch.
> To prevent building on 32-bits architectures, the `architecture-is-64-bit`
> build dependency can be used, as `architecture-is-little-endian` can be used
> to prevent building on big endian systems.
> """
[...]

Hello Paul,

Thanks for the pointer.

This only works if no binary packages should be built for a specific
architecture. In my my case (pinentry) only the qt-package should be
dropped on i386, the other binaries should be (auto)built.

cu Andreas