On Thu, Sep 18, 2003 at 09:00:03PM -0500, Craig P. Steffen wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > I am prospective DD; as one of my opening packages, I intend to adopt the > sound file editor xwave. One of the bugs against it, 170005, says that > depending on the virtual package "libxaw-dev" is wrong. Yes; dependencies on pure virtual packages with no preceding real alternative are wrong. > However, reading the debian policy manual sections 3.6 and 7.4, it seems to > me to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The real packages libxaw6-dev > and libxaw7-dev exist, and are listed as Providing libxaw-dev. The only > other thing that the policy manuals suggest is that virtual packages be > mentioned in the virtual-packages-name-list.txt. > > So I propose that "libxaw-dev" be added to that list. You're misunderstanding what's going on. Adding libxaw-dev to the virtual packages list won't suddenly make it okay to have a pure virtual dependency on it. Packages must always delcare a dependency on a real package before a pure virtual one as an alternative. E.g.: Depends: libxaw7-dev | libxaw-dev Depends: xterm | x-terminal-emulator The reason for this is so that package management utilities can automatically act on such dependencies, instead of halting and asking the user to solve the problem of which of N packages that provide the virtual package should be installed. -- G. Branden Robinson | Psychology is really biology. Debian GNU/Linux | Biology is really chemistry. branden@debian.org | Chemistry is really physics. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | Physics is really math.
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