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Re: Dependencies of -dbg and -doc packages



Ludovic Brenta wrote:

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.

Agreed.

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.

Can't this process be automated?

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 think Recommends is sufficient.

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?

I think Recommends is too strong; Suggests is sufficient. Ada programmers don't debug! (as much as others)

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.

Good.

Greetings,

Jacob
--
Statistics is like a bikini - what it shows is very suggestive,
but the most important stuff is still hidden.


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