Re: Virtual packages (was Re: Bug#64006:)

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Wed, 24 May 2000, Julian Gilbey wrote:

> On Wed, May 17, 2000 at 10:04:04AM -0700, Chris Waters wrote:
> > My original statement: "we should document the APIs provided by
> > virtual packages."
> > 
> > My modified statement in light of all the feedback I've gotten: "we
> > should document whatever common interface (including none) that our
> > virtual packages provide."
> > 
> > My underlying point remains the same, though.
> 
> I've just read through the virtual packages list, and there's barely a
> virtual package which either doesn't do this already, for example awk
> says:
> awk                     Anything providing suitable /usr/bin/{awk,nawk} (*)

Actually, if we want to follow common standards, we should deprecate "nawk",
there are several reasons for that:

* Every implementation of awk in Debian support functions.
* The Single Unix Specification says "awk" support functions.
* SUS says nothing about "/usr/bin/nawk" having to be available.

The same way we say "(POSIX) shell scripts should use /bin/sh and not
/bin/bash" we should probably say "awk scripts should use /usr/bin/awk,
not /usr/bin/nawk".

[ I already tried once to change this, but I had not read what SUS says
  about this yet ].

Thanks.