Re: Problem with package build-depends against libpcap-dev - isthis a bug?
Roy Hills <royhills@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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?
Yes, there are no problems running the programs after they have
been compiled against libpcap08-dev.
>> 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.
It looks like the libpcap-dev package is to ease the transition from
woody to sarge. Woody has just libpcap0 and libpcap-dev (no zero in
the -dev package name), both of which have version 0.6.2-2, whereas
sarge includes the first two version digits in both runtime and dev
packages and supplies two versions: 0.7 and 0.8.
I presume that there must be a reason why both
0.7 and 0.8 are
supported in sarge, but I can't find anything.
>> Any pointers would be gratefully received.
> Did you have a look at the BTS pages for the involved packages?
Yes, I couldn't find anything except a wishlist bug against
libpcap-dev which asked if it should be removed.
I'll submit a bug against libpcap-dev first for not allowing
libpcap0.8-dev to satisfy the dependency, and see where that
leads. I guess that the libpcap-dev developer should know
what is supposed to happen.
Roy
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