Some questions about dependencies

[Björn Stenberg <bjorn@haxx.se>]

Hi.

I'm trying to understand the dependency system so I can find the complete and
correct answer to questions in the form "why is the latest version of package
X not in testing yet". I've been annoying some of you with wrong assumptions
previously, sorry about that. I'll avoid that this time and just ask a few
questions.

I know about the five rules, valid candidates, the excuses page(s) and
packages.qa.debian.org. I'm mostly looking at valid candidates and there are
a few things that I don't understand:

1) Debcheck often reports "Package declares a build time dependency on [pkg]
which cannot be statisfied on [port]." Must all such build time dependencies
be resolved before a package is accepted into testing?

2) If (1) is true, how come some packages have unresolved builddeps for
testing and stable? New ports?

3) If (1) is false, where do I look to see why libpcap is not in testing yet?
It is a 260 days old valid candidate with no unresolved dependencies.

4) What is the best way to find out why cfitsio depends on gcc-3.3? I can find
it by searching through all buildd logs and knowing that libgcc1 is part of
gcc-3.3. Is there an easier/quicker way?

5) Both gcc-3.2 and gcc-3.3 appear to contain libgcc1. Why does cfitsio depend
on gcc-3.3 and not gcc-3.2? Because gcc-3.2 depends on gcc-3.3?

(As it currently looks, both gcc-3.2 and gcc-3.3 are actually valid candidates
so maybe the example packages above will finally go into testing soon.
If not, why?)

Thanks.

-- 
Björn