Adding an architecture to a PPA doesn't automatically trigger builds

[LaMont Jones]

If there are no builders for a given (virtualized, architecture) tuple when a source upload is processed, no build records get created for that
architecture.

There are really several cases here:
1) we don't build that tuple ever (e.g., virtualized sparc)
2) all of the builders for that tuple are down at the moment, or off doing other stuff (I expect the latter to fall out of the automigration of builders across compatible architectures, e.g. amd64/i386/lpia - if not for this issue, I'd be tempted to temporarily move the last lpia buildd to i386 sometimes)

Additionally, it's possible (in a ppa at least) that a user might want to:
1) delete an architecture's build record for a ppa he controls,
2) create an architecture's build record to handle the aftermath of (a) this bug, (b) PaS changes, or (c) previous deletion per the line above.

thanks,
lamont

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

It seems the actual problem is that we don't have a decent way of creating new builds. There's already a script:
scripts/ppa-add-missing-builds.py
that adds builds in PPAs. We should extend this so we can be more selective over which package we want to add builds for, and also make it work for the Ubuntu archive.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

The "lack of builders causes no build records" thing is an urban legend that has no truth behind it. scripts/add-missing-builds.py now works for all archives, but it's still a bit awkward to have to run it manually.

[Vincent Bernat (vbernat)]

With the recent addition of ppc64el, is it possible to trigger a build for this architecture while it wasn't available when the source package was uploaded? Is that something that can be requested?

[Mattia Rizzolo (mapreri)]

I had to do that and with the help of cjwatson I found out you can do that with
copy-package -A ppa:$user/ubuntu/$ppa --from-suite $suite --to-suite $trusty -e $pkgversion -b -n $pkg
(copy-package is from lp:ubuntu-archive-tools) you can do that.
Alternatively you can do that from the web ui, by selecting "copy package", chosing the same suite of destionation, the same archive (ppa) of destination, and asking to carry on binaries
Either way it'll trigger a rebuild of missing binaries (=> the newly added architecture).