Dependencies of -dbg and -doc packages
In the course of investigating the upgrade process of Ada packages from
Lenny to Squeeze, I had to install all Ada packages in Lenny to begin
with.
The way I did was by looking at all the packages that Depend: on gnat-4.3;
this gave me a list of (most) -dev packages, which in turn Depend: on the
shared library packages. However, finding the -dbg packages is more
difficult.
The Debian Policy for Ada (5.6 "The separate debugging information
package") does not mandate any form of dependencies; I would like to add a
list of required dependencies.
For starters, for technical reasons it is obvious that:
Rule: the -dbg package SHALL depend on the exact version of the
corresponding shared library package.
But this is insufficient to make the -dbg package visible to the human,
e.g. in aptitude. Indeed, the human administrator must navigate from
gnat-4.3 to the -dev package, then to the shared library package, and only
then to the -dbg package; and then repeat the whole process for each -dev
package that depends on gnat-4.3. I would like to propose:
Rule: the -dbg package SHALL depend on the exact version of the
corresponding -dev package.
While not absolutely required to get a stack trace, the -dev package is
certainly necessary for any kind of source-level debugging; so the
dependency seems to make sense. We could relax it to just Recommends:
though.
I am pondering whether the -dev package should also Suggest: or Recommend:
the -dbg package(s). Note that, by default, aptitude now installs
recommended packages, so a Recommends: would result in installing all the
-dbg packages for a -dev package by default. OTOH, the -dbg packages all
have priority "extra" (the lowest possible priority), so Recommends: may
be too strong. What do you think?
Once we have an agreement, the next steps are to publish an update to the
Debian Policy for Ada and to audit the existing packages in Squeeze for
compliance. I think we can do that before the freeze.
I have the same idea about -doc packages: in order to make them more
visible to the human administrator, I think a rule like the following is
necessary in "5.5 Documentation":
Rule: the -dev package SHALL Recommend: the -doc package, if any.
Comments?
--
Ludovic Brenta.
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