Subject: mozc is not compiled on all little-endian platforms, should it be?

From: Simon McVittie <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2023 13:22:34 +0000

Source: mozc
Version: 2.28.4715.102+dfsg-2.2
Severity: normal

>From discussion on #1029821, it seems that mozc only supports little-endian
CPU architectures (for example i386 and arm64) and does not support
big-endian CPU architectures (for example powerpc and s390x).

At the moment, mozc is only compiled on some little-endian architectures:

* amd64
* arm64
* armel
* armhf,
* i386
* riscv64

but not on others, such as:

* mips64el
* mipsel
* ppc64el
* hurd-i386
* kfreebsd-amd64
* kfreebsd-i386
* sh4 (?)
* x32

Should mozc be compiled on *all* little-endian architectures, or are there
other reasons why it needs to be restricted to a subset of them?

If the intention is to compile mozc on all little-endian platforms, the
easiest way is probably:

    # debian/control
    ...
    Build-Depends: ..., architecture-is-little-endian, ...

    ...

    Package: ibus-mozc
    Architecture: any
    ...

    Package: uim-mozc
    Architecture: any
    ...

and so on, so that it builds successfully on all LE architectures (past,
present and future) but is BD-Uninstallable on all BE architectures.

If we change GNOME's idea of the default input method for Japanese locales
from anthy to mozc as requested in #1029821, then any changes here might
need to be coordinated with src:gnome-desktop (although I'm investigating
whether we can make that decision dynamically at runtime). Please keep
the GNOME team informed on what happens here.

Thanks,
    smcv

---

From: Maia Johnson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 13:39:19 -0800

I use a Japanese ppc64el desktop, and I build the mozc packages from
salsa just by adding ppc64el to the Architecture: lines in the control
file. If there is any technical reason why ppc64el was excluded, I
cannot identify it. Tested yesterday in an up to date Debian 12.4
environment to be sure. For any who would like to take a look without
building themselves, my packages are here:

https://pkg.tsundoku.ne.jp/debian/pool/bookworm/main/

Could we implement Simon's suggestion or something like it, so that
working architectures are not excluded for this package, and affected
users don't have to request their addition one by one?

Thanks!

-- 
maia