increase apt flexibility (for third party apps)

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 08:59:28PM +0100, Mike Hearn wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 09:39:05 -0700, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > The fact that binaries continue to work doesn't help much: it's still a
> > necessity that everything in the distribution build correctly from source.
> 
> Well, if there had been binaries of njamd available it would have helped
> _me_ when I wanted to use it, the fact that Debian requires that source
> code builds [with the current compiler] is more an artifact of policy than
> anything else. For instance, it's common on Windows or MacOS X to use
> software that you cannot yourself build.

Neither Debian nor Ubuntu throw away existing binaries when the source fails
to build.  It is required, though, that it be fixed so that it builds again,
before the package is considered releasable, and unreleasable packages
eventually get removed from the distribution because they aren't supportable.

It is of little consequence in this case whether the end user can build it.
What matters is that we, the maintainers, can't build it.

-- 
 - mdz