I've thought about this a lot as well, and unfortunately I agree with both of you :) It is extremely irritating that all the automake packages don't provide "automake". But the way things stand now packages depend on automake when they mean automake1.4, and we should not rely on some undefined behavior of the buildd's to pick the right package. One then that I could do that hasn't been suggested yet is making another virtual package called "automaken" and have all the automakes provide that. When a package needs an unversioned dependency on automake then could just use that (similar to emacs' "emacsen"). Is this a better solution? * Junichi Uekawa (dancer@netfort.gr.jp) wrote: > "Steve M. Robbins" <steven.robbins@videotron.ca> immo vero scripsit: > > > Providing "automake" is not a problem with the "official buildd" > > software and any bugs so induced (which would have been induced with > > automake1.5 last October) can be fixed with a change to > > debian/control. Thus Junichi's worry, while valid, strikes me > > personally as minor. > > Build-Depends is not only for the official-buildd. > And that official buildd has not been even packaged for a long time. > > > The main problem is that since the last the this debate took place, > there still are many packages which build-depend on automake. > > The likely path to go is to remove the Build-Dependency of automake from > all packages, or specify automake versioned dependency. > And there has been a lot of discussion on how to do that. > Using AM_MAINTAINER_MODE seems to be the cleanest solution. > > > Otherwise we will never be able to drop automake 1.4 from > the distribution > > > regards, > junichi > -- Eric Dorland <dorland@lords.com> ICQ: #61138586, Jabber: hooty@jabber.com 1024D/16D970C6 097C 4861 9934 27A0 8E1C 2B0A 61E9 8ECF 16D9 70C6 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d- s++: a-- C+++ UL+++ P++ L++ E++ W++ N+ o K- w+ O? M++ V-- PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t++ 5++ X+ R tv++ b+++ DI+ D+ G e h! r- y+ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
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