On 00-12-01 Stefan Hornburg wrote:
> Petr Cech <cech@atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz> writes:
> > On Fri, Dec 01, 2000 at 12:20:13PM +0100 , Stefan Hornburg wrote:
> > >
> > > How can I work around the following problem. I don't know
> > > if a package contains shared libraries, but it may.
> >
> > no. it should read "if it contains arch specific packages"
> >
> > > If not, dpkg-gencontrol doesn't accept the build
> > > because it sees
> > >
> > > Depends: ,courier-base
> > >
> > > The control file reads:
> > >
> > > Depends: ${shlib:Depends}, courier-base
> >
> > if it has no binary packages so why put it there in the first place?
> There are scenarios where this could be useful:
> - you don't know if shared libraries needed
How should this happen? If you build the binaries, you will normally
notice if shared libs are necessary or not. Can you please give an
example where you don't know it?
> - you use dh_perl and ${perl:Depends} and upstreams remove
> the only Perl script
Then you should remove this calls. As you should test and check your
package before uploading it to the archive, you will get to notice and
fix this.
> After all, data processing
> - should be liberal to the format of user input
> - very strict in its own input
> So, if dpkg tools complain over missing newlines at EOF,
> empty package names in depends, empty newlines at end
> of control files (with a confusing error message),
> they are unnecessarily annoying.
No, missing newlines can be very important and need to be fixed. Empty
package names in depends normally show that something with your
build-process is not set up correctly and needs to be fixed. Empty
Newlines and the end of control-files should be removed as the unnessary
increase the size of the control file and description of the package.
So you see, that this errors are not unnesssary, but very important to
get the packages in a good shape. If our build-tools weren't so strict,
I think, we would never have packages in such a good state as now (Yes,
I know that there' still a lot to do to improve our quality.).
> Please take this not as a rant against the developers
> of these software, but more as a hint to make
> Debian packaging smoother.
It's already in my opinion smooth enough.
Ciao
Christian
--
Debian Developer and Quality Assurance Team Member
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