Re: The ghost of libc-dev

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org>
> On Fri, Feb 18, 2005 at 09:17:55PM +0000, Henning Makholm wrote:

>> But can one get a C compiler at all (at least a Debian-supplied one)
>> without also pulling in an appropriate libc-dev? I would think
>> that "I need to compile $userspace package" *did* require at least a
>> compiler to be installed, regardless of policy.

> I guess that depends on whether one wants to rely on every package which
> Provides c-compiler to also Depend on the correct libc*-dev package for
> the relevant platform(s).

I don't think there can be much argument that anything that Provides
c-compiler also has to make sure that standard header files like
<stdio.h> or <unistd.h> are present on the system. Otherwise it
wouln't be able to do its job, namely compiling C programs.

I have no a priori opinion about whether such making sure should
involve virtual packages, and if so which.

However, a -dev packages that contains C(++) headers is obviously only
useful if one already has a C compiler, so there should be no need to
depend directly on a libc-dev. One might argue that any -dev package
that provides a C interface should depend on c-compiler themselves,
but our traditional answer to that one seems to be, "don't be silly;
a user should be able to figure out *that* by himself".

> Really, I think the simplest answer is a tool that detects *all* of the
> relevant -dev packages, in a simple and automated fashion,

I agree with this - it would need some compile-time parallel to shlibs
files in order to discover which possibly virtual package is the right
one to depend on to get /usr/include/foo.h.

However, for as long as we have to trace the dependencies by hand, I
see little benefit in requiring an explicit dependency on a libc-dev.

-- 
Henning Makholm                              "En tapper tinsoldat. En dame i
                                         spagat. Du er en lykkelig mand ..."