Re: how to split packages

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 10:28:22PM +0900, Junichi Uekawa wrote:
> When splitting a package, one tends to create a new package
> containing a portion of the original, like
> 
> proggie and proggie-extra, with
> proggie suggesting proggie-extra.
> 
> However, this breaks build-depends/upgrade with apt-get, and
> what else.
> 
> To avoid it, if it is possible, it could be done this way:
> 
> "proggie-core" contains the core material, and 
> "proggie" contains the extra programs, and depend on "proggie-core"

The groff split involved a combination of both.

  potato:

    groff

  woody:

    groff-base Suggests: groff, groff-x11
    groff Depends: groff-base, Suggests: groff-x11
    groff-x11 Depends: groff-base, Suggests: groff

This didn't break anything automatic (e.g. build-dependencies) that used
groff, because groff-x11 is only useful for interactive use, and a
debconf note warns that groff-x11 has been split out. It allows people
to remove the larger groff package if they only want its core
functionality, and new base installs won't contain groff.

I think this is a reasonable way to perform major package splits,
although, in the case where you only need to split out one program,
renaming the entire package may be uncomfortable for some people.

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]