Re: 01/01: gnu: ocaml@4.01: Remove aarch64-linux from supported-systems.

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il> skribis:
>
>> On Sat, Dec 01, 2018 at 05:23:32PM -0500, Mark H Weaver wrote:
>>> Hi Efraim,
>>> 
>>> guix-commits@gnu.org writes:
>>> 
>>> > efraim pushed a commit to branch master
>>> > in repository guix.
>>> >
>>> > commit 454e7132d6fffb5c9a5ce086ffd1b687416feb83
>>> > Author: Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>
>>> > Date:   Sat Dec 1 22:41:19 2018 +0200
>>> >
>>> >     gnu: ocaml@4.01: Remove aarch64-linux from supported-systems.
>>> >     
>>> >     * gnu/packages/ocaml.scm (ocaml@4.01)[supported-systems]: New field.
>>> 
>>> What's the rationale for this change?
>>> Debian includes OCaml 4.01 in its arm64 port.
>>> 
>>>   https://packages.debian.org/search?arch=arm64&keywords=ocaml
>>>   http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/o/ocaml/ocaml_4.01.0-5_arm64.deb
>>> 
>>>       Mark
>>
>> starting phase `configure'
>> ../gnu/config.guess: unable to guess system type
>
> Would it be enough to add Automake as a native input and copy
> ‘config.guess’ from there?

Ideally, we shouldn't need 'config.guess' at all.  Normally, it is only
used if the GNU triplet is not explicitly passed to ./configure.  A few
years ago, I fixed most instances of this problem by unconditionally
passing --build=<triplet> to ./configure in the default 'configure'
phase of gnu-build-system.

  https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/commit/?id=3c7d023d6458669c6bfa23bc85e098c91f699892

However, our OCaml package has a custom 'configure' phase that does not
pass --build.  I'm not sure if that's because OCaml's configure phase
doesn't support --build, or if it was omitted because it's not typically
needed on x86_64.

* * *

Anyway, more generally, I hope that we will not get in the habit of
simply removing systems from 'supported-systems' when builds fail on
those systems, without investigating and concluding that it would be
prohibitively difficult to support the software on that system.

To my mind, it's *good* to see failed builds on other architectures, to
be reminded of bugs on non-x86_64 systems that should be fixed.  When we
remove systems from 'supported-systems' without good reason, this is
somewhat analogous to deleting unfixed bug reports.

What do you think?

      Mark