Re: [PATCH] ci: Check for necessary Debian packages when running build-many-glibcs.py

[Joseph Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com>]

On Mon, 8 Nov 2021, Lukasz Majewski wrote:

> The 'distro' module is the most elegant (and pythonic) way to get the
> info about running OS.

Florian's suggestion of checking for specific programs, so staying 
completely independent of the running OS and its version and of whether 
those programs are provided by the OS or not, seems much better to me.

> > Why is dnsutils needed?

>   File "/usr/lib/python3.7/socket.py", line 748, in getaddrinfo
>     for res in _socket.getaddrinfo(host, port, family, type, proto,
> flags): socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known

That doesn't answer my question, since getaddrinfo (implemented using the 
C library function of that name, presumably) shouldn't be using any of the 
programs in dnsutils "Transitional package for bind9-dnsutils".  "Can do 
working DNS client lookups from library code" is not the same as "has 
certain executables installed that a user might use from the command line 
to look things up in the DNS".

If you want to check for working DNS lookups / network access from library 
code, then trying to look up www.gnu.org seems a better approach than 
checking for any installed programs.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com