Re: Source-depends?

[ron@microtronics.com.au (Ron)]

> > So how does this all sound to you guys?
> 
> Well, it sounds like you repeated what about a dozen people have already
> said. The concern is an automated way to generate the depends. The
> autobuilders already use a semi-working type of this, but it isn't perfect
> and makes assumptions that can't always be assumed.
> 
> I have already made a patch for dpkg-* programs to use source deps in a
> control field, that's not the problem though.
> 
> Ben

As this has probably been thrashed about innumerable times before, yet we
all agree that having source dependancies would be valuable, could someone
summarise (or provide a pointer to) the problems that have been identified.

I see two situations up front:
 - a need to describe the tools needed to build a package
    (eg. gcc, bison, flex, etc..)
 - and a need to describe the other source packages or librarys required
    to build a working binary.

as well as a way to auto-detect these dependancies, what else is required?

best,
Ron.