Section: and Priority: in shared libs: Questions and PROPOSAL
Greetings,
I've prepared two binary packages from one "Source: slang" package:
slang0.99.34 - A C programming library for user interfaces - shared library
slang0.99.34-dev - A C programming library for user interfaces - development kit
I wanted to set the following Section and Priority:
Package Section Priority
slang0.99.34 devel standard
slang0.99.34-dev devel optional
There are two main issues to be addressed:
First, how to get the correct information into the control and
.changes file. I have been unsuccessful in accomplishing this.
In the debian/control file, empirical research shows that one can only
put Section and Priority fields in the Source portion of the file and
hence only identical values can be suggested here for each binary
package.
I have tried using these two commands in various places in
debian/rules to no avail:
dpkg-distaddfile slang0.99.34-dev_0.99.34-1_i386.deb devel optional
dpkg-genchanges -DPriority=optional
Anyone know the answer?
Can we document it in the programmer's manual (or maybe it's there and
I missed it)?
Secondly, my decision to put the shared object in "standard" and the
development kit in "optional" is /not/ the way tcl74, tcl75, and
probably other do it. So I'm really making the suggestion that all
shared libraries should go into "standard" so that most all systems
would get these packages installed. But the -dev packages should only
be installed by those who go out of their way in dselect to choose such
"optional" packages. For ease of reference here is what the policy
manual says:
standard
These packages provide a reasonably small but not too limited
character-mode system. This is what will install by default if the
user doesn't select anything else. It doesn't include many large
applications, but it does include Emacs (this is more of a piece
of infrastructure than an application) and a reasonable subset of
TeX and LaTeX (if this is possible without X).
optional[4]
This is all the software that you might reasonably want to install
if you didn't know what it was or don't have specialised
requirements. This is a much larger system and includes X11, a
full TeX distribution, and lots of applications.
Finally, in the debian/shlibs file should I include information about
historical versions of the current package? In my case should I add the line:
libslang 0 slang-lib
to this file, so that the old (inflexibly packaged) version of this
shared lib is recorded for possible use later?
At first I thought, of course. But now I'm leaning toward only
including the current packages information. Because I can't see any
reason to maintain that level of support for older versions of the
shared libs.
--
Christopher J. Fearnley | Linux/Internet Consulting
cjf@netaxs.com, cjf@onit.net | UNIX SIG Leader at PACS
http://www.netaxs.com/~cjf | (Philadelphia Area Computer Society)
ftp://ftp.netaxs.com/people/cjf | Design Science Revolutionary
"Dare to be Naive" -- Bucky Fuller | Explorer in Universe
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