Re: Bug#5307: new elvis depends on xlib
Lars Wirzenius wrote:
>
> Christoph Lameter:
> > The elvis pacakge would better suggest X and not depend on it. Its
> > perfectly reasonable to use elvis without X.
>
> It depends (according to the bug report) on the X shared library.
> Since it's linked with the libraries, they must be installed,
> or the program won't even start.
>
According to section 4.2 of the Debian policy manual supplied in dpkg 1.4.0.3:
Some programs can be configured with or without support for X
Windows. Typically these binaries produced when configured for X
will need the X shared libraries to run.
Such programs should be configured with X support, and should
declare a dependency on elf-x11r6lib (for the X11R6 libraries).
Users who wish to use the program can install just the relatively
small xlib package, and do not need to install the whole of X.
Do not create two versions (one with X support and one without) of
your package.
Unless I have misunderstood the policy manual, the way I packaged elvis
(with one binary containing both the usual ncurses based interface, as
well as the x11 interface), is correct. I did however make an
adjustment (to avoid confusion) of setting the curses interface to be the
default, even when running under X. This was not the original behavior,
so now if the X interface is desired, it must be requested from the command
line. If this was the WrongThing(tm) to do, please let me know.
While I'm on the subject of elvis, I managed a temporary workaround
for the dpkg complex dependancy bug (#4947), but in order to get elvis to
install over the old versions, the files from the old package elviscmn get
left on the system. Does anybody know a way to manually force dpkg to
completely purge and remove an old package. (Please do not suggest that I
use "Replaces: elviscmn" and "Conflicts: elviscmn". It does not work, due
to bug #4947. I am asking for OTHER ways to get this done manually that
wont mess up the Debian stuff, and wont leave the old package elviscmn on
the system.) I want to fix this, because the changes needed to dpkg are
not likely to happen anytime soon, and I suspect somebody will eventually
complain about elvis leaving droppings all over their system...
-Erik
--
Erik B. Andersen Web: http://www.et.byu.edu/~andersee/
2485 South State St. email: andersee@et.byu.edu or andersee@debian.org
Springville, Ut 84663 phone: (801) 489-1231
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