Re: packages don't fully report dependencies

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

Susan:
> c) the process of unpacking and then configuring various packages is not
> going well at all.

Thanks for being the guinea pig. :-)

> The fundamental problem was/is that perl won't install correctly (it complains
> that it "Can't load libdb.so.1").  I just sent a bug report in about that. 

OK. Let's look at what's happened on your system since the base floppies
were read in. They should have installed these two files under /usr/lib:

lrwxrwxrwx   1 root    root          15 Mar 21 15:04 libdb.so.1 -> libdb.so.1.85.2
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root    root       65153 Dec 20 07:31 libdb.so.1.85.2

Are those files still there? You'll need both a library and a symbolic link.

> What surprises me is that many packages (over a dozen now, I quit counting) 
> don't install if perl isn't properly installed, and don't report on the
> DEPENDS line of their control files that they do, in fact, depend on perl.
> I'm also surprised that this problem hasn't been mentioned before.

The base system contains the perl executable. It doesn't install the entire
package, but the perl interpreter is there and should be working. However,
it shouldn't blow up if you go to install the entire perl package on top of
it.

> a) is it really Debian policy that packages can omit their dependence on 
> another package without reporting that on the DEPENDS line?

Stuff that's installed by the base floppies can be left out of the depends
line - however it sure doesn't hurt to put in dependencies on base packages.
The problem with doing that for Perl is that I don't install the perl package,
only the perl executable goes in the base. I think a dependency on perl would
work if we split perl into two packages - one that's just the interpreter and
another that contains all of the headers and packages. I can't fit those
headers and packages into the 3 base floppies, so currently I copy perl in
using a script.

> b) is it obvious that I've made some mistake, and if so what was it?

You did this before anyone else had the chance to trip over the problems?

I think if you can fix the libdb problem, the rest will work. I'm very
interested in hearing how to duplicate the problem.

	Thanks

	Bruce
--
Pixar Animation Studios: Reality is not our business.
Pixar's "Toy Story", at greater than $184,200,000 in domestic box office
receipts, is the #1 movie released in 1995!