Re: is it a bug to not depend on a library package needed for some binary?

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Karl Chen <quarl@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:

> Suppose package P contains files /usr/bin/B1 and /usr/bin/B2.  B1
> is the important program, and B2 is not as important.  Is it OK
> for the declared package dependencies to not satisfy all the
> run-time shared library dependencies of B2?  What if they are
> listed in Suggests?
>
> I have found many such packages.

Any examples?

>From my gut I would say thats a serious policy violation and if P
can't depend on all libs it should be split into B1 and B2 packages
and B1 suggest B2.

If your examples are like B1 is a console program and B2 an X program
and P doesn't want to pull in X for console users then splitting is
the right thing to do. isdnutils would be example of having split due
to this in the past.

MfG
        Goswin