Re: libpcsclite1: please drop Recommends: pcscd

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi again,

The following is not strictly speaking about the same bug, so dropping
Bug#622837 from the cc list.

Ludovic Rousseau wrote:
> Le 15/04/11 22:04, Don Armstrong a écrit :

>> 3) Why is there a versioned Recommends: on an exact version pcscd?
>
> Because libpcsclite1 and pcscd use an ad-hoc protocol. The protocol
> sometimes evolve and I do not want to maintain a backward
> compatibility.
> I added the exact version to solve bug #613405

Thanks for explaining.  A versioned Recommends or Suggests would not
guarantee much.  What happens when the ABIs are mismatched?

Perhaps it would make sense to add something like

	Breaks: libpcsclite1 (<< ${source:Upstream-Version})

to pcscd and

	Breaks: pcscd (<< ${source:Upstream-Version})

to libpcsclite1, assuming the ABI is only broken by upstream version
bumps.  I am not sure how well package managers would cope with that,
though --- any valid upgrade path would involve deconfiguring
libpcsclite1 or pcscd.  How do other pcscd reverse-dependencies deal
with this (e.g., why is it that an updated version of pcscd won't
cause libgempc430 to break)?

One (ugly?) alternative would be for pcscd to depend on the
corresponding version of libpcsclite1.  Once libpcslite2 comes around,
it would have to use Breaks against the old version of pcscd.

> I guess reverting from Recommends: to Suggest: is the correct way to
> solve this "bug".

Thanks.  It would still be nice to sort out the above.  Lowering the
dependency to a Suggests: does take care of my use case indeed.

Regards,
Jonathan