Question regarding supported_archs noarch

[Joshua Root]

On 2022-1-14 04:12 , Jason Liu wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> A hopefully quick and simple question regarding 'supported_archs 
> noarch'. Is 'noarch' meant to specify that the build itself isn't 
> supposed to be architecture-specific, or does it mean that the final 
> output products are not architecture-specific?

Strictly speaking it refers to the installed files, but it's pretty 
unusual to require specific archs during build but only install noarch 
files. (BTW, not installing any Mach-O files doesn't guarantee that a 
port is noarch - it's possible to have architecture-specific information 
in other file types.)

> I have a subport that basically runs through the entire build, including 
> compiling the source code, but then in the end simply throws away those 
> compiled objects, and the only files that are retained (i.e. staged into 
> destroot) are the game data files, which are basically just a bunch of 
> text files and images (which are not architecture-specific). It seems 
> that the upstream developers wrote the makefiles this way because some 
> of the game data files get generated during the compile process, and 
> they never bothered to cleanly split off the generating of the game data 
> files into a separate makefile that can be run by itself.

Whether this would work with the subport marked noarch depends on the 
build system and its dependencies. If it links with external libraries, 
not having them available for the right archs could certainly make the 
build fail (pointlessly, since the file failing to link won't be 
installed). That may be an uncommon case, but the best idea would be to 
see if there's a different Makefile target you can run that just builds 
and installs the data, and if not, maybe add one.

- Josh