[Fedora-packaging] filing ExclusiveArch bugs when it's HW architectural

[Matt Domsch]

Packaging Guidelines say:

- MUST: If the package does not successfully compile, build or work on
  an architecture, then those architectures should be listed in the
  spec in ExcludeArch. Each architecture listed in ExcludeArch needs
  to have a bug filed in bugzilla, describing the reason that the
  package does not compile/build/work on that architecture. The bug
  number should then be placed in a comment, next to the corresponding
  ExcludeArch line. New packages will not have bugzilla entries during
  the review process, so they should put this description in the
  comment until the package is approved, then file the bugzilla entry,
  and replace the long explanation with the bug number. (Extras Only)
  The bug should be marked as blocking one (or more) of the following
  bugs to simplify tracking such issues: [WWW] FE-ExcludeArch-x86,
  [WWW] FE-ExcludeArch-x64, [WWW] FE-ExcludeArch-ppc 



My question:
Why file a bug when it's clearly a hardware architectural issue?
e.g. the hardware arch does not provide the capability that the
package uses.  Seems like a waste of a bug that won't be fixed.  For
example, the libsmbios spec uses ExclusiveArch i386 x86_64 ia64, with
a nice comment on how the tables this uses are only provided by BIOS
of those architectures.  ppc and sparc most likely won't ever change
in this respect.  So why file the bug?

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com