Re: Build-Depends: libmysqlclient-dev and buildds

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es> writes:

> The recent announce from Steve has reminded me of something I wanted
> to ask about the package name change from libmysqlclient-dev to
> libmysqlclient12-dev made in November:
>
> Do packages still having "Build-Depends: libmysqlclient-dev" build
> from source? Trying "apt-get build-dep" on them results on apt-get
> being undecided about which libmysqlclient-dev to install.
>
> Do buildds handle this gracefully?

Buildds handle that but not gracefully. The actualy -dev package the
buildd uses will be random for all intents and purposes as long as
there are two packages (or even just two versions) of the provided
package available.

Under the line Build-Depends must be against real packages. Worst
case, if you must have the virtual package, you must provide a real
dummy package that Depends on the virtual package to ensure buildds
and apt-get work at all. But that's still highly frowned upon due to
being somewhat random in what gets used for builds.

MfG
        Goswin