Re: Bug#932258: console-setup-freebsd: missing dependency

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

On Wed, 2019-07-17 at 18:06:00 +0300, Anton Zinoviev wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 04:15:51PM +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:
> > this seems like a problem with console-setup-freebsd being arch:all 
> > and depending on kFreeBSD-specific packages which will not be 
> > available elsewhere, in the same way console-setup-linux is an 
> > arch:all depending on Linux-specific packages.
> 
> Why is it a problem to have an arch:all package which is installable 
> only on some architectures (due to missing dependencies)?

Because that's generally confusing for users, as they might not know
off-hand whether the unsatisfiable problem is due to a bug or it being
intended that way (even though it could be made very clear in the
Description). It also triggers all kind of alarms on automatic
dependency satisfiability checkers, which then need to be ignored
(like apparently this being the cause for thus bug report :). And
I guess in the metadata sense it seems wrong, as even though the
contents do not change across different architectures (so it has one
of the facets of an arch:all package) it is still not an archecture
indepdenent package (one of the other facets of an arch:all package).

Thanks,
Guillem