Re: JOEL BAKER, STOP TELLING PEOPLE TO DEPEND ON LIBC-DEV *INSTEAD* OF LIBC6-DEV
On 15-Oct-02, 12:11 (CDT), Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> wrote:
> So, let's figure it out. What should packages containing only header
> files and object archives (.a files) depend on, in and of themselves,
> anything?
Because libraries that use other libraries tend to have the header
files that reference the other libraries' header files (for data type
definitions, if nothing else). But it's certainly not impossible, or
even unlikely, to have a library whose interface, as specified in its
header file(s), that doesn't require libc header files, and thus,
strictly speaking, has no need to depend on libc6-dev (or whatever).
As a practical matter, it's pretty hard to write a useful[1] C program
without using at least some of the C standard library. Or maybe not:
I suppose GTK/GNOME programs tend to use glib for functionality that
usually comes from libc, right? But in any case, it's not libfoo-dev's
job to require a complete development environment.
Steve
[1] Yes, I know about kernel programming and embedded programming and
other specialized environments. But those tend to provide their own
equivalent functionality anyway.
--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net
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