Summary? Re: source dependencies - and recomndations

[Steve Greenland <stevegr@NeoSoft.COM>]

In an attempt to get closure, I'm going summarize what I've seen
so far. I'm not trying specify exact syntax here.

======

Case 1:

Goal: Auto package rebuilds, just like the maintainer's.

Solution:

The solution that seems to have gathered several "This sounds good"s:

Source-Depends: x,y,z
Source-Depends-<arch>: x,y,z,t

If there exists a "Source-Depends-<arch>" that matches the current build
architecture, then that selected, otherwise the generic "Source-Depends"
is selected. The relationship is either/or, not union: only one gets
selected. The expectation is that most packages (WAG: >90%) only need
"Source-Depends".

This has the advantage in that it seems that we could use the
existing dependency parsing/evalution/whatever routines, if such exist.

Alternative solution:

Something like 

Source-Depends: x, y, z, (<arch>; t)

with logical relationships. More flexible, would seem to require work to
expand the dependency parsing routines, but it could also be applied to
binary dependencies, and might be quite useful.

======

Case 2:

Goal: package rebuilds, from some minimum functionality level
to everything.

Solution:

Source-Depends: x,y
Source-Recommends: z
Source-Suggests: t

Not sure how architecture needs are fit into this, except as "if you're
building on i386, we suggest you install 't'". Of course, we could add a
-<arch> field to each of these.

======

Ok, if I mistated or missed something, please correct.

Opinion: I like the Case 1, Source-Depends, Source-Depends-<arch>
solution. It's easy to explain, easy to add, and would seem easy to
implement. The alternate would work, but seems like overkill, and has
more opportunities to get wrong.

I don't like Case 2, mostly because I disagree that we ought to be
solving that goal. If you want (re-)build the debian package, then it's
not sufficient, if you don't, you're probably working with the original
source anyway.


Steve Greenland

-- 
The Mole - I think, therefore I scream 

			  "According to my instruments -- they're preparing
			   to jump into hyper-space... or go to warp
			   drive... or something like that."
[Yes, it's JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL.  3 points.]


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