Problem with package build-depends against libpcap-dev - is this a bug?
I'm having problems building nmap and xprobe from source because of
build-depends on libpcap-dev. I need to build these two packages
from source because I have local patches that I want to apply to the
source code before it's compiled.
I'm running sarge on i386 and have libpcap0.8-dev installed, which
allows both nmap and xprobe to build without error if I use
"dpkg-buildpackage -d" to override the dependency check.
If I try to install libpcap-dev, it removes libpcap0.8-dev and installs
libpcap0.7-dev - effectively downgrading the libpcap development
libraries. It does this because libpcap-dev depends on
libpcap0.7-dev, which conflicts with libpcap0.8-dev. However, I
don't want to do this, because the packages I'm interested in compile
and run
fine with 0.8, so I see no reason to downgrade to 0.7.
Is this a bug? If so, which package is in error - nmap for
specifying libpcap-dev, or libpcap-dev for not allowing libpcap0.8-dev
to meet the dependency?
I also note that the notes for libpcap-dev say that it is a "Empty
package to facilitate upgrades, can be safely removed", so I guess this
means that other packages shouldn't have depends against it.
Here are the details of the libpcap packages that I have installed:
# dpkg -l | grep libpcap
ii libpcap0.7
0.7.2-7 System interface for
user-level packet captu
ii libpcap0.8
0.8.3-5 System interface for
user-level packet captu
ii libpcap0.8-dev 0.8.3-5 Development library and header files for lib
Any pointers would be gratefully received.
Roy
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