Re: Bug#38544: gettext: split package into -base and -dev
reopen 38544
severity 38544 wishlist
thanks
> On Sun, 30 May 1999, Julian Gilbey wrote:
>
> > Package: gettext
> > Version: 0.10.35-7
> > Severity: wishlist
> >
> > As it would be very useful to use the gettext program within shell
> > scripts to internationalise them, it would make a lot of sense if this
> > package could be split into two, with one package just containing the
> > /usr/bin/gettext program, copyright and readme info, and probably the
> > gettext .mo files (although I am very uncertain about this), say called
> > gettext-base. Shell scripts making use of the gettext program could
> > then depend upon the much smaller gettext-base to be able to invoke
> > the gettext program. Without the .mo files, this would make the
> > package about 30k, which would be very reasonable to place in the base
> > system or at least mark as Important. If enough standard shell
> > scripts use it, we could even consider marking it essential. The
> > remainder of the gettext package, which could perhaps be renamed
> > gettext-dev, or just leave it as gettext, would contain the rest of
> > the gettext suite, including all of the documentation and suchlike.
>
> I dislike this idea of splitting the gettext package.
Why? It provides two totally different things: an end-user program
(gettext) and a whole developer's suite. And at least in the slink
version, there is no end-user documentation of the gettext package
beyond gettext --help. (The info document only describes the library
gettext() function.) It is our standard practice with libraries to
have both libfoo and libfoo-dev packages built from the same source;
why not do the same here? It will certainly save average users who
want the functionality of gettext available from the shell scripts in
Debian packages from having to install the whole gettext development
suite.
> IMHO, a much better approach for shell scripts is to check for the
> existence of /usr/bin/gettext (this may be done in two lines of code) and
> use "echo" if gettext is not available. This way, no dependencies on
> gettext are needed at all.
See my other mail: this means that users are at the mercy of sysadmins
unnecessarily.
> BTW: gettext is already in the base system, maybe the ftp maintainers
> have not moved it to the "base" section yet. Feel free to submit a bug
> about this.
Your responsiblity: packages generally only get moved if someone
reports a bug to ftp.debian.org, and that's the maintainer's
responsibility.
Besides, what argument can there be for placing a 950k package in the
base system (it *certainly* won't fit on the floppies) when the only
file of significant utility to non-developers is the 17k
/usr/bin/gettext?
This is some of why I advocate splitting /usr/bin/gettext from the
rest of the package, the rest was in the other mail.
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
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