On Sat, 15 Sep 2018 15:40:33 +0200, Michael Biebl wrote: > On Thu, 30 Aug 2018 12:03:31 +0200 Paul Gevers <elbrus@debian.org> wrote: > > I have just pushed commit 9fade8dcb501250f704da9c77af1f8e6165dc941 that > > documents that we want to remove the needs-recommends option as we > > discussed in https://lists.debian.org/debian-ci/2018/06/msg00016.html. > So I have this specific case where I found needs-recommends quite > convenient: > I have a package (firewalld) which has optional dependencies like ipset > or ebtables. If those are not installed, firewalld will log a warning > and continue with the functionality disabled. We're also using needs-recommends for perl packages / in pkg-perl-autopkgtest. % autodep8 Test-Command: /usr/share/pkg-perl-autopkgtest/runner build-deps Depends: @, @builddeps@, pkg-perl-autopkgtest Test-Command: /usr/share/pkg-perl-autopkgtest/runner runtime-deps Depends: @, pkg-perl-autopkgtest Test-Command: /usr/share/pkg-perl-autopkgtest/runner runtime-deps-and-recommends Depends: @, pkg-perl-autopkgtest Restrictions: needs-recommends In practice, there's currently one test in the "runtime-deps-and-recommends" department: syntax.t which, among other things, does `perl -wc <perl module file>' and is helpful to detect syntax errors in code which is not used during build tests. Cf. also https://perl-team.pages.debian.net/autopkgtest.html#syntax.t The reason we need the packages in Recommends is quite simple: there are often modules in packages which are no core functionality, hence their dependencies are not in Depends but in Recommends. Without needs-recommends we would - need to exclude them from syntax.t (the machinery exists but it's quite some work) - lose the ability to test them. So if needs-recommends vanishes, there will be at least dozens if not hundreds of perl packages which will immediately fail their autopkgtests. (josch's count of 154 affected packages in https://lists.debian.org/debian-ci/2018/06/msg00016.html fails to take all the autodep8 packages into account.) Cheers, gregor -- .''`. https://info.comodo.priv.at -- Debian Developer https://www.debian.org : :' : OpenPGP fingerprint D1E1 316E 93A7 60A8 104D 85FA BB3A 6801 8649 AA06 `. `' Member VIBE!AT & SPI Inc. -- Supporter Free Software Foundation Europe `- NP: R.E.M.: Losing My Religion
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