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ORed build profiles

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  ORed build profiles Matthias Klose <doko@debian.org> - 2025-11-23 08:10 +0100
    Re: ORed build profiles Bastian Blank <waldi@debian.org> - 2025-11-23 08:40 +0100
    Re: ORed build profiles Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> - 2025-11-24 00:10 +0100
      Re: ORed build profiles Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2025-11-24 00:20 +0100
        Re: ORed build profiles Matthias Klose <doko@debian.org> - 2025-11-24 06:50 +0100
    Re: ORed build profiles Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2025-11-24 18:30 +0100
      Re: ORed build profiles Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> - 2025-12-03 02:30 +0100

#119676 — ORed build profiles

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Trying to work with ORed build profiles, either I fail to understand how 
to work with these, or something is wrong with the implementation.

llvm-toolchain-21 in unstable introduces a pkg.llvm.noclang build 
profile, to be able to only build the llvm related packages, not 
building anything else clang, flang, bolt, lld, lldb related.  That works.

However when adding additional pkg.llvm.noflang, pkg.llvm.nolld, ... 
build profiles for some more fine grained control (attached diff), as in

   Package: lld-21
   Build-Profiles: <!pkg.llvm.noclang> + <!pkg.llvm.nolld>

then all the packages with an ORed build profile are NOT built by 
default.  I'm not expecting this.  dpkg doesn't complain about the 
syntax of this field.

Looking at
https://wiki.debian.org/BuildProfileSpec#The_Package-List_field

the spec seems to be a little bit ambiguous about that field, not giving 
a spec, but just some examples, and no example for ORed build profiles, 
and not explaining what the examples are supposed to do.

There's also nothing told about the precedence of the operators, (NOT 
(!), OR (+), AND (,)).

If there's a better place to talk about this spec (better in a bug 
report), please let me know.

Matthias

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#119677

On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 08:07:15AM +0100, Matthias Klose wrote:
>   Package: lld-21
>   Build-Profiles: <!pkg.llvm.noclang> + <!pkg.llvm.nolld>

> There's also nothing told about the precedence of the operators, (NOT (!),
> OR (+), AND (,)).

There are no AND and OR operators.  So "+" is not a valid syntax
element.

You are looking for:
|   Build-Profiles: <!pkg.llvm.noclang> <!pkg.llvm.nolld>

On this page, "+" only shows up in a different context, which is not
relevant for the contents of the Build-Profiles field.

Bastian

-- 
Intuition, however illogical, is recognized as a command prerogative.
		-- Kirk, "Obsession", stardate 3620.7

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#119692

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On Sun, 2025-11-23 at 08:07 +0100, Matthias Klose wrote:
[...]
> However when adding additional pkg.llvm.noflang, pkg.llvm.nolld, ... 
> build profiles for some more fine grained control (attached diff), as in
> 
>    Package: lld-21
>    Build-Profiles: <!pkg.llvm.noclang> + <!pkg.llvm.nolld>
> 
> then all the packages with an ORed build profile are NOT built by 
> default.  I'm not expecting this.  dpkg doesn't complain about the 
> syntax of this field.
> 
> Looking at
> https://wiki.debian.org/BuildProfileSpec#The_Package-List_field
> 
> the spec seems to be a little bit ambiguous about that field, not giving 
> a spec, but just some examples, and no example for ORed build profiles, 
> and not explaining what the examples are supposed to do.
> 
> There's also nothing told about the precedence of the operators, (NOT 
> (!), OR (+), AND (,)).
[...]

For the Build-Profiles field, "the same restriction formula syntax from
the Build-Depends field is used", and I think that is adequately
documented.

For the Package-List field I think the syntax is changed just to avoid
whitespace in the expression.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
If God had intended Man to program,
we'd have been born with serial I/O ports.

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#119693

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Quoting Ben Hutchings (2025-11-24 00:00:56)
> On Sun, 2025-11-23 at 08:07 +0100, Matthias Klose wrote:
> [...]
> > However when adding additional pkg.llvm.noflang, pkg.llvm.nolld, ... 
> > build profiles for some more fine grained control (attached diff), as in
> > 
> >    Package: lld-21
> >    Build-Profiles: <!pkg.llvm.noclang> + <!pkg.llvm.nolld>
> > 
> > then all the packages with an ORed build profile are NOT built by 
> > default.  I'm not expecting this.  dpkg doesn't complain about the 
> > syntax of this field.
> > 
> > Looking at
> > https://wiki.debian.org/BuildProfileSpec#The_Package-List_field
> > 
> > the spec seems to be a little bit ambiguous about that field, not giving 
> > a spec, but just some examples, and no example for ORed build profiles, 
> > and not explaining what the examples are supposed to do.
> > 
> > There's also nothing told about the precedence of the operators, (NOT 
> > (!), OR (+), AND (,)).
> [...]
> 
> For the Build-Profiles field, "the same restriction formula syntax from
> the Build-Depends field is used", and I think that is adequately
> documented.
> 
> For the Package-List field I think the syntax is changed just to avoid
> whitespace in the expression.

Yes, that was the reasoning we used back then.

There is also a good chance that build profiles will be part of Debian Policy
soon. The latest version of the text (last message in the bug) is much better
written than the BuildProfileSpec page in the Debian wiki and might thus be a
better document to read to understand how it is supposed to work:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=757760

Thanks!

cheers, josch

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#119697

On 11/24/25 00:12, Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues wrote:
> Quoting Ben Hutchings (2025-11-24 00:00:56)
>> On Sun, 2025-11-23 at 08:07 +0100, Matthias Klose wrote:
>> [...]
>>> However when adding additional pkg.llvm.noflang, pkg.llvm.nolld, ...
>>> build profiles for some more fine grained control (attached diff), as in
>>>
>>>     Package: lld-21
>>>     Build-Profiles: <!pkg.llvm.noclang> + <!pkg.llvm.nolld>
>>>
>>> then all the packages with an ORed build profile are NOT built by
>>> default.  I'm not expecting this.  dpkg doesn't complain about the
>>> syntax of this field.
>>>
>>> Looking at
>>> https://wiki.debian.org/BuildProfileSpec#The_Package-List_field
>>>
>>> the spec seems to be a little bit ambiguous about that field, not giving
>>> a spec, but just some examples, and no example for ORed build profiles,
>>> and not explaining what the examples are supposed to do.
>>>
>>> There's also nothing told about the precedence of the operators, (NOT
>>> (!), OR (+), AND (,)).
>> [...]
>>
>> For the Build-Profiles field, "the same restriction formula syntax from
>> the Build-Depends field is used", and I think that is adequately
>> documented.
>>
>> For the Package-List field I think the syntax is changed just to avoid
>> whitespace in the expression.
> 
> Yes, that was the reasoning we used back then.
> 
> There is also a good chance that build profiles will be part of Debian Policy
> soon. The latest version of the text (last message in the bug) is much better
> written than the BuildProfileSpec page in the Debian wiki and might thus be a
> better document to read to understand how it is supposed to work:
> 
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=757760

thanks for the pointer to the report.

sorry, the last proposed text again doesn't explicitly talk about the 
Build-Profiles attribute.  There are too many "I think"'s here, and e.g. 
claims that these don't support ORs, while the spec *is* talking about 
ANDing and ORing.

"Thinking" in a spec should be avoided. Plus dpkg apparently doesn't 
properly check the supposed/intended syntax.

Please be explicit about the Build-Profiled attribute, and give some 
examples like you did for the Build-Depends field.

The spec should be explicit about
  - Are <> part of the list?
  - Where is whitespace allowed/prohibited?
  - Having examples for the Build-Profiles attribute, without referencing
    the Build-Depends attribute.

Please update the spec.

Matthias

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#119706

On Sun, 23 Nov 2025 at 08:07:15 +0100, Matthias Klose wrote:
>Trying to work with ORed build profiles, either I fail to understand 
>how to work with these, or something is wrong with the implementation.

Some working examples, from src:glib2.0, which illustrate both ORed and 
ANDed build-deps:

# B-D on dbus-daemon, etc. if (!nocheck) || (!noinsttest)
Build-Depends:
  dbus-daemon <!nocheck> <!noinsttest>,

# B-D-A on cross-exe-wrapper if (cross && !nogir)
Build-Depends-Arch:
  cross-exe-wrapper <cross !nogir>,

To vary whether a package is built, you use the same syntax, but in the 
Build-Profiles field. So for example libglib2.0-tests is only built if 
installed tests and GIR are both enabled, which is written like this:

# Build if (!noinsttest) && (!nogir)
Package: libglib2.0-tests
Build-Profiles: <!noinsttest !nogir>

I can never remember that <a b> means "a AND b" and <a> <b> means "a OR 
b" (half the time I try to use them the other way round, which is 
wrong), so I've got into the habit of always adding a comment to 
indicate intent whenever something depends on a combination of two or 
more build profiles.

The different syntax involving commas and plus signs as described in 
https://wiki.debian.org/BuildProfileSpec#The_Package-List_field is 
specific to the Package-List field, and is not used in Build-Depends or 
Build-Profiles. In fact, that section of the wiki page does have a 
concrete example of a valid Build-Profiles field (followed by its 
translation into Package-List syntax).

The comma and plus sign are also quite confusing - if the Package-List 
is a context where whitespace and angle brackets can't be used, I would 
have expected something more like cross&!nocheck|nopython, but 
presumably there are syntax restrictions that rule out & and | in that 
context as well?

     smcv

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#119813

Hi!

On Mon, 2025-11-24 at 17:23:31 +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
> The comma and plus sign are also quite confusing - if the
> Package-List is a context where whitespace and angle brackets can't
> be used, I would have expected something more like
> cross&!nocheck|nopython, but presumably there are syntax
> restrictions that rule out & and | in that context as well?

While trying to improve both the dpkg documentation and parsing of the
build profiles (prompted by the misunderstanding from this thread),
I stumbled again into an old problem, where we never defined the set
of valid characters to use as profile names, and where we have
colliding character set overloading from different contexts.

This had already bothered me with the current namespace separator «.»
(as listed in https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/TimeTravelFixes). But
with the profile property in the Package-List field, this is worse,
because «+» is a valid package name as well and nothing has prevented
its use.

I also agree that «,» and «+» are confusing and the more obvious «&»
and «|» would be way better. Unfortunately I don't think it's safe to
change the format of the current profile property, _but_ we can
version it and deprecate the older one!

So I've just implemented a new profile:v1 property deprecating the
profile (v0) one that maps using the characters you suggested, thank
you! Queued to be part of my next push targeting dpkg 1.23.0.

I still think the valid characters for profile names need to be
defined, and I'd really like to progressively change the namespace
separator from «.» to «/» as well. Will bring that up in the policy
report though.

Regards,
Guillem

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