mawk(1) , gawk(1) and package control files (questions)
I have debianized mawk(1), a pattern scanning and text processing
language (it's awk, really). I will upload it as soon as I get ELF
installed. For now, I have a few questions on this my first
debianization effort.
o Why is gawk a required package? And is there any reason why gawk
forcibly installs awk to be a symbolic link to awk? Maybe because my
mawk package hasn't been released yet :) Could gawk | mawk be set up
for the Required priority?
o I'm not clear on the "provides" virtual package as it would apply to
'awk'. Should gawk "provide" 'awk'? Should mawk "provide" 'awk'?
Since clearly awk should be a symbolic link to gawk or mawk but not
both, is there a conflict here? Or should the "conflict" be resolved
by the {post,pre}{inst,rm} scripts (this seems best to me as most
people would have both installed side by side)? Maybe my mawk package
should Recommends or Suggests gawk?
o It occurs to me that many packages should "Recommends" or "Suggests"
man and/or info. Yet they don't. Why? What am I missing? And most
packages depend on ldso. So are essential packages too basic to be
listed in the control files? Is it possible that this lack of
consistency in setting dependencies could affect us much like the
current libc, libc4 and libc5 (which as required packages under Debian
0.93R6 weren't mentioned in the depends fields of any packages).
Thanks for Debian. I'm thoroughly enjoying it! I just wish I could
easily order a CD :(
--
Christopher J. Fearnley | UNIX SIG Leader at PACS
cjf@netaxs.com (finger me!) | (Philadelphia Area Computer Society)
cfearnl@pacs.pha.pa.us | Design Science Revolutionary
http://www.netaxs.com/~cjf | Explorer in Universe
"Dare to be Naive" -- Bucky Fuller | Linux Advocate
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