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Re: Source-depends?



On Sat, May 22, 1999 at 04:38:21AM +0930, Ron wrote:
> > Well, it sounds like you repeated what about a dozen people have already
> > said. The concern is an automated way to generate the depends. 
Umm, any purticular reason to that compile-depends must be autogenerated --
why can't they be done manualy by the packager?  (I realize that this is less
then ideal -- but having this in optionaly, manualy seems better then not
having it at all.)

> > The
> > autobuilders already use a semi-working type of this, but it isn't perfect
> > and makes assumptions that can't always be assumed.
Mind describing the method the autobuilders use (and where I can find
approprate source)?

> > I have already made a patch for dpkg-* programs to use source deps in a
> > control field, that's not the problem though.
Any reason not to put it in your next upload?

> 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.
Why do these need to be treated differently?

> as well as a way to auto-detect these dependancies, what else is required?
I've read through all of the archives that seemed appropriate, and found the
following problems that had been brought up:
1. Automatic generation of the field(s)
2. Required/Recomened/Sugueted defs (for ex, what to do with tex tools and
   such that are required for only minor peices of the packages.)
3. Requiring bin-packages vs. requiring build trees from other package's
   source

In general, on prior discussions, there was no conclusion on 1 and 2, but on
3 it was suguested that requiring build trees from another package was
considered buggy.

A soultion to number 1 that was tossed around included using libtricks to
get a list of files accessed, and is therefor (IIRC) obselete.  (And in any
case is prohibitively slow.)

	-=- James Mastros
-- 
First they came for the fourth amendment, but I said nothing because I
wasn't a drug dealer. Then they came for the sixth amendment, but I kept
quiet because I wasn't guilty. Finally they came for the first amendment,
and by then it was too late to say anything at all." 
	-=- Nancy Lebowitz
cat /dev/urandom|james --insane=yes > http://www.rtweb.net/theorb/
ICQ: 1293899                   AIM: theorbtwo                  YPager: theorbtwo


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