Re: Problem with package build-depends against libpcap-dev - is this a bug?
Roy Hills <royhills@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
You'd make me happier if you'd wrap your lines at a sensible length,
like 75, instead of letting me do it...
> 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.
Do the programs also run without problems?
[only libcap0.7-dev provides libcap-dev]
> 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?
It depends... Usually all development packages of stable versions of a
library Provide the generic name package, so the first guess is that
libcap0.8 should provide libcap-dev. But it might not be so easy -
maybe libcap0.8 isn't as stable as 0.7. If it was in testing, there
could be other causes - e.g. currently there's libkpathsea3-dev and
libkpathsea4-dev in sid, but only libkpathsea3-dev in testing, and only
provides libkpathsea-dev. The purpose is that all packages that
build-depend on libkpathsea-dev will be linked against the SOVERSION 3
and can migrate to testing without problems, while the 4 version is only
used by one source package - the one that provides it.
> 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.
This might indicate that it was for an older upgrade (0.6-0.7), and
there is no smooth upgrade path from 0.7 to 0.8 - maybe on purpose. In
this case, it's either a bug in nmap and xprobe that they don't allow
building against 0.8 - or the maintainer has found that there's an
incompatibility.
> Any pointers would be gratefully received.
Did you have a look at the BTS pages for the involved packages?
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer
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