Re: testing, unstable, and dependencies

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 01:17:22PM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote:

 > This could be handled with conditional dependencies, see the old wishlist bug
 > against dpkg in the BTS.
 > 
 > Build-Depends: libfoo-dev (>>3)
 > Build-Depends-Cond: unstable -> libfoo-dev (>>4)

 So, now, I, the maintainer, have to care about getting the build
 dependencies right for unstable *and* testing *and* stable.  Sounds
 error prone to me.

 Besides that, what happens when unstable becomes stable?  Do you want
 me to make an upload to stable to update the build dependencies?

 And what about this:

    Build-Depends: libfoo-dev (>> 3), libbar-dev
    Build-Depends-Cond: unstable -> libfoo-dev (>> 4)
    
    Package: libbar-dev
    Depends: libfoo-dev (>> 4)

 What if there's no libbar-dev that works with libfoo-dev?  Remember
 that one of Gunter's points was that upstream software adapts itself
 (at compile time) to several versions of the libraries it needs -- what
 if it doesn't?

 I'm not shooting the idea down, I'm just saying it's not as
 straighforward to implement as it might seem.

-- 
Marcelo