Noarch package with arched tests

[Susi Lehtola]

Hi,


I've packaged pybind11 which is a seamless interface between Python and 
C++11. This is a headers-only package, which would make it noarch... 
However, it also carries a testsuite, which - of course - is important 
to run on all architectures.

Is there some nifty trick to trick the build system to build the package 
on all arches simultaneously while making the headers package noarch?

If there were any binaries produced by the package, this would be easily 
accomplished, but I don't think there's any sense in shipping e.g. the 
testsuite just to make the headers noarch.

(Of course, should pybind11 develop a runtime library, then 
pybind11-devel would also include symlinks to the library, making it no 
longer a noarch package!)
-- 
Susi Lehtola
Fedora Project Contributor
jussilehtola(a)fedoraproject.org

[Björn 'besser82' Esser]

Am 26.02.2017 um 23:13 schrieb Susi Lehtola:
>  Hi,
>
>
>  I've packaged pybind11 which is a seamless interface between Python 
>  and C++11. This is a headers-only package, which would make it 
>  noarch... However, it also carries a testsuite, which - of course - is 
>  important to run on all architectures.
>
>  Is there some nifty trick to trick the build system to build the 
>  package on all arches simultaneously while making the headers package 
>  noarch?
>
>  If there were any binaries produced by the package, this would be 
>  easily accomplished, but I don't think there's any sense in shipping 
>  e.g. the testsuite just to make the headers noarch.
>
>  (Of course, should pybind11 develop a runtime library, then 
>  pybind11-devel would also include symlinks to the library, making it 
>  no longer a noarch package!) 
Since you would build it like any python-package (python2 / python3 
sub-packages), it's pretty easy to run the testsuite on all arches: 
Simply move the "BuildArch: noarch" from the main-package to all 
sub-packages.

Example:

# This package ships no binaries, thus no debuginfo is available.
%global debug_package %{nil}


Name: python-pybind11
…
BuildRequires: …
# No BuildArch here!!!

%package -n python2-pybind11
…
BuildArch: noarch

…

%package -n python3-pybind11
…
BuildArch: noarch

…

%check
#Run tests here.


This will make the package be build on all arches, but simply generate 
noarch-packages.

Cheers
   Björn

[Kevin Kofler]

Susi Lehtola wrote:
>  I've packaged pybind11 which is a seamless interface between
> Python and
>  C++11. This is a headers-only package, which would make it noarch...
>  However, it also carries a testsuite, which - of course - is important
>  to run on all architectures. 
Since Koji builds noarch packages on a random architecture, it will 
eventually hit all of them (law of large numbers). So I do not see this as a 
valid reason to make a package arch-dependent. The fact that there is a 
testsuite at all is already more testing than required.

        Kevin Kofler

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 02/26/2017 11:13 PM, Susi Lehtola wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>
>  I've packaged pybind11 which is a seamless interface between Python and
>  C++11. This is a headers-only package, which would make it noarch... 
Cf. the "Packaging Header Only Libraries" section in the FPG.

These are required NOT to be noarched.

>  However, it also carries a testsuite, which - of course - is
> important
>  to run on all architectures. 
This is one reason for the requirement mentioned above.

Ralf

[Susi Lehtola]

On 02/27/2017 03:36 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>  On 02/26/2017 11:13 PM, Susi Lehtola wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> > I've packaged pybind11 which is a seamless interface between Python and
> > C++11. This is a headers-only package, which would make it noarch...
>
>  Cf. the "Packaging Header Only Libraries" section in the FPG.
>
>  These are required NOT to be noarched. 
Thanks, I just landed on that section myself!
-- 
Susi Lehtola
Fedora Project Contributor
jussilehtola(a)fedoraproject.org

[Björn 'besser82' Esser]

Am 27.02.2017 um 12:36 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
>  On 02/26/2017 11:13 PM, Susi Lehtola wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> > I've packaged pybind11 which is a seamless interface between Python and
> > C++11. This is a headers-only package, which would make it noarch...
>
>  Cf. the "Packaging Header Only Libraries" section in the FPG.
>
>  These are required NOT to be noarched. 
This is a Python-package from pypi, not a header only lib…  I don't see 
any reason for forcing the built binary packages to be archful… There is 
no configuration or anything going on in setup.py; it even drops all 
flies in %pythonX_sitelib.

> > However, it also carries a testsuite, which - of course - is important
> > to run on all architectures.
>
>  This is one reason for the requirement mentioned above. 
That reason doesn't even make sense, since we can generate noarch'ed 
sub-packages from an archful package.

Can you elaborate a bit more about your statement, you made made without 
even looking at the sources, please?

>  Ralf 
Cheers
   Björn

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 27 Feb 2017 22:49:22 +0100, Björn 'besser82' Esser wrote:

>  Am 27.02.2017 um 12:36 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
>  > On 02/26/2017 11:13 PM, Susi Lehtola wrote:  
>  >> Hi,
>  >>
>  >>
>  >> I've packaged pybind11 which is a seamless interface between Python and
>  >> C++11. This is a headers-only package, which would make it noarch...  
>  >
>  > Cf. the "Packaging Header Only Libraries" section in the FPG.
>  >
>  > These are required NOT to be noarched.  
>  
>  This is a Python-package from pypi, not a header only lib…  I don't see 
>  any reason for forcing the built binary packages to be archful… There is 
>  no configuration or anything going on in setup.py; it even drops all 
>  flies in %pythonX_sitelib. 
The C++ headers in that package are not covered by the test suite?

[Björn 'besser82' Esser]

Am 28.02.2017 um 13:19 schrieb Michael Schwendt:
>  On Mon, 27 Feb 2017 22:49:22 +0100, Björn 'besser82' Esser
> wrote:
>
> > Am 27.02.2017 um 12:36 schrieb Ralf Corsepius:
> >> On 02/26/2017 11:13 PM, Susi Lehtola wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> I've packaged pybind11 which is a seamless interface between Python and
> >>> C++11. This is a headers-only package, which would make it noarch...
> >> Cf. the "Packaging Header Only Libraries" section in the FPG.
> >>
> >> These are required NOT to be noarched.
> > This is a Python-package from pypi, not a header only lib…  I don't see
> > any reason for forcing the built binary packages to be archful… There is
> > no configuration or anything going on in setup.py; it even drops all
> > flies in %pythonX_sitelib.
>  The C++ headers in that package are not covered by the test suite? 
The headers are tested, but we don't need to generate arch'ed 
binary-pkgs to run the testsuite on all arches;  running the build 
archful and the built 'binary'-pkgs noach'ed should be sufficient in 
this case.

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2017 14:51:21 +0100, Björn 'besser82' Esser wrote:

>  >>> These are required NOT to be noarched.  
>  >> This is a Python-package from pypi, not a header only lib…  I don't see
>  >> any reason for forcing the built binary packages to be archful… There is
>  >> no configuration or anything going on in setup.py; it even drops all
>  >> flies in %pythonX_sitelib.  
>  > The C++ headers in that package are not covered by the test suite?  
>  
>  The headers are tested, but we don't need to generate arch'ed 
>  binary-pkgs to run the testsuite on all arches;  running the build 
>  archful and the built 'binary'-pkgs noach'ed should be sufficient in 
>  this case. 
Not sure yet how exactly that would work, because it would require a
noarch subpkg to be defined with a different %{name} than the src.rpm
package. Questionable practice. Technically it would work though,
provided that the build system still compares all noarch builds with
eachother in order to detect differences.