Re: Introducing Build-Recommends / Build-Core-Depends?

[Carsten Hey <carsten@debian.org>]

* Andreas Barth [2011-08-15 13:46 +0200]:
> * Carsten Hey (carsten@debian.org) [110815 13:36]:
> > An optional "Build-Depends:" field per binary package as you described
> > is essentially the same as the following, with the notable difference,
> > that the below could appear as it is in the output of, i.e., apt-cache
> > showsrc without requiring maintainers of all those packages to invent
> > a new syntax just to enable users and developers to look up information.
> >
> >     Build-Depends[foo-stage1]: debhelper
> >     Build-Depends[foo-stage2]: debhelper, libx11-dev
> >     Build-Depends: debhelper, libx11-dev, libgnome2-dev
>
> No, it's not.
>
> There is an really large difference: This here means the maintainer
> needs to write down by hand what the path to build the package is.

There seems to be a misunderstanding, caused by choosing an unfortunate
example, here is an other one:

    Source: emacs23
    Build-Depends: gnome, kde, ncurses-dev
    Build-Depends[emacs23-nox]: ncurses-dev

If necessary, debhelper could ensure that the binary packages's
dependencies are included in the Build-Depends line.


apt-cache showsrc emacs23 currently displays something similar to:

    Package: emacs23
    Binary: emacs, emacs23-lucid, emacs23-nox, emacs23, ...
    ...
    Build-Depends: gnome, kde, ncurses-dev
    ...

If per-package build dependencies are added, it could look like this
with my proposal:

    Package: emacs23
    ...
    Build-Depends: gnome, kde, ncurses-dev
    Build-Depends[emacs23-nox]: ncurses-dev
    ...

With your proposal it would either miss information, invent yet an other
syntax, or use multiple fields per source package with the same name but
a different semantic:

    Package: emacs23
    ...
    Build-Depends: gnome, kde, ncurses-dev
    Build-Depends: ncurses-dev
    ...


Regards
Carsten