Re: main or contrib?

[Charles Plessy <charles-debian-nospam@plessy.org>]

Le Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 03:30:50PM +0200, Thibaut Paumard a écrit :
> Charles Plessy <charles-debian-nospam@plessy.org> wrote:
> > Examples of packages which would be included in contrib are:
> >     * free packages which require [...] packages which
> >       are not in our archive at all for compilation or execution
> 
> So yes, you can put in contrib free bits of software that depend on things not in Debian to function.

Hi,

well, I am wondering what this really means :

- If a package in contrib depends on a package which is absent of the
  Debian archives, how can it be autobuilt? If it cannot build, can it
  be released? In the past Pine was only released as a source package,
  but I do not know what is the general feeling about this now.

- The policy still mentions dependancies about packages, not about
  software. Does it mean that the upload of packages which can not be
  built or used using commands like dpkg, apt, or aptitude, as opposed
  to make, is discouraged?

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles