busybox dependacies -- use virtual packages?

[Blars Blarson <blarson@blars.org>]

I was looking at the debian-installer TODO list recently mentioned on
debian-devel, and under the old TODO section see:

Status for different parts of debian-installer.  The numbers are
approximate (as in +/- 50%) and may change in any direction, at any
time.

[0%]     - Not begun
	- Some kind of a mechanism for udebs to declare what parts of
	  busybox they need, so we can ensure that all deps are met while
	  keeping the busybox footprint small.
          Packages depending on base-installer should use the
	  utilities in /target so we can keep busybox's size down.          


If this is still the case, and udebs use the same type of dependencies
as normal debs, how about using virtual packages to do this?  Busybox
would provide the packages it has been compiled with (it may be
possible to automate this) and packages that need something that
busybox can supply would depend on the individual components.

A busybox compiled to do ls, mkfs, and du would provide busybox-ls,
busybox-mkfs, and busybox-du.  Packages requiring these facilities
would depend on them, with a possible alternate of the regular package
or udeb.

(The examples are bogus, I have not looked at busybox to see if it
actually has these options.)

This would mean a potentially large number of virtual udebs, all with
the same prefix.  By using an existing mechanism, the amount of work
needed should be as small as possible.

-- 
Blars Blarson			blarson@blars.org
				http://www.blars.org/blars.html
"Text is a way we cheat time." -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden