[Numpy-discussion] Debian/Ubuntu patch help (was: ANN: NumPy 1.6.2 release candidate 1)

Ralf Gommers ralf.gommers at googlemail.com
Wed May 16 15:01:24 EDT 2012


On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Julian Taylor <
jtaylor.debian at googlemail.com> wrote:

> > Hi, if there's anyone wants to have a look at the above issue this
> > week,
> >that would be great.
>
> > If there's a patch by this weekend I can create a second RC, so we can
> > still have the final release before the end of this month (needed for
> > Debian freeze). Otherwise a second RC won't be needed.
>
> bugfixes are still allowed during the debian freeze, so that should not
> be an issue for the release timing.
>
> OK, that's good to know. So what's the hard deadline then?


>
> I don't see the issue with the gcc --print-multiarch patch besides maybe
> some cleanup.
> --print-multiarch is a debian specific gcc patch, but multiarch is
> debian specific for now.
>
> It doesn't work in 11.04, but who cares, that will be end of life in 5
> month anyway.


Eh, we (the numpy maintainers) should care. If we would not care about an
OS released only 13 months ago, we're not doing our job right.


> Besides x11 almost nothing is multiarched in 11.04 anyway
> and that can still be covered by the currently existing method.
>
> gcc should be available for pretty much anything requiring
> numpy.distutils anyway so that should be not be an issue.
> On systems without --print-multiarch or gcc you just ignore the failing,
> there will be no repercussions as there will also not be any multiarched
> libraries.
>
> If it's really that simple, such a patch may go into numpy master. But
history has shown that patches to a central part of numpy.distutils are
rarely issue-free (more due to the limitations/complexity of distutils than
anything else). Therefore making such a change right before a release is
simply a bad idea.

the only potential issue I see is that upstream gcc adds a
> --print-multiarch that does something completely different and harmful
> for distutils, but I don't consider that very likely.
>
> Hardcoding a bunch of paths defeats the whole purpose of multiarch.
> It will just to break in future (e.g. when the x32 abi comes to
> debian/ubuntu) and will make cross compiling harder (though I guess
> numpy distutils may not be built for that anyway)
>

If that hardcoding will break in the future, then I think for 1.6.2 the
maintainers of the Debian package should apply the gcc patch to their
packaged numpy if they think that is necessary.

Ralf
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