* Matt Zimmerman (mdz@debian.org) wrote: > On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 04:33:40PM -0500, Steve Langasek wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 04:52:35PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote: > > > -dev packages should *NOT* depend on other -dev packages unless their > > > public .h files #include files from those other -dev packages (which > > > generally shouldn't be the case). That whole crap was due to the lack > > > of understanding of the problem and blindness to the proper solution > > > (versioned symbols). The result is that it just makes things FTBFS and > > > doesn't actually fix the problem anyway. Not exactly useful. > > > > The reason for dependencies between -dev packages was libtool's failure > > to accomodate glibc's transitive dependency support, which is a separate > > issue than versioned symbols (though both contribute to the overall > > problem). > > What about static linking? (the "other" role of -dev packages) I'm not a big fan of them. Aside from that, however, forcing these depends of -dev packages will generate FTBFS bugs in some situations that would otherwise be fine (especially once most libraries have versioned symbols). At least, following the plan to include the SONAME in the -dev package (which, as I mentioned in my other mail, may not make sense going forward since it's really an API definition rather than an ABI one...). Another point is that you can link in the static version of the library if you want without having to have the other -dev packages installed (though, of course, if you want a completely statically linked binary at the end you'll need all of them). Perhaps a 'suggest' or a 'recommends' would be alright. Of course, when I think about what the definition of those are and compare it to what people generally use a -dev package for (compiling other Debian packages or locally built stuff and generally not statically linked stuff) the best I can reasonably match it with would be 'Suggests' and even that's iffy. Making it a Depends would mean that the vast majority of cases people would end up downloading alot of static libraries (with that problem getting worse and worse as we have more libraries depending on libraries and whatnot) they wouldn't need. If the static libraries were in a seperate .deb then perhaps it could have a Depends so long as it was expected that people only use static libraries to build static binaries and not partially static ones... Stephen
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