On Wed, Jul 27, 2005 at 07:20:44PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote: > > 4. -dev packages should depend on other -dev packages? > > Yes. > Whoah, whoah, whoah. This is just blatently false. There *certainly* > wasn't a consensus that -dev packages should regularly depend on -dev > pacakges. There's a couple corner cases where it's required (because > the headers of one #include's headers from the other) but that > definitely doesn't deserve a 'should'. In fact, even those cases should > generally be discouraged. The "corner cases" where -dev packages must depend on other -dev packages cover the majority of libraries in Debian. If you mean *unanimous* consensus, then you're right that we don't have it, but you're the only hold-out that I see. > libtool is broken in this regard and needs to be fixed to survive > missing files. Then fix it instead of giving people bad advice. > libtool's brokenness just isn't a good enough reason to introduce all > these -dev -> -dev dependencies. The fuck it isn't. I'm not going to sit back while you run around crippling our ability to rebuild the archive just because you have an aesthetic objection to libtool. *The only alternative to having -dev packages for libtool-using libraries depend on the -dev packages of other libtool-using libraries that they need is to have all libtool-using packages build-depend directly on all of those indirect dependencies*. Until you present us with a libtool that includes a fix for this misfeature, and convince maintainers to *use* it in their packages, these are the only two options that give you buildable packages -- and having packages build-depend on all the indirect dependencies has a *much* higher crap factor. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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