[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Spliting packages between pkg and pkg-data



Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org> writes:

> 3. Loose dependencies between -data and main packages *CAN* create breakage
>    on partial upgrades, depending on just how tight the relationship between
>    a particular version of the package and its arch-indep data is.  Watch
>    out for this, it is NOT always an easy problem to solve because of bin
>    NMUs.

One can provide 'foo-abi-1234' and depend on that. For packages that
seldomely change the data format this works fine.

For frequent/regular data format changes a Depends: foo-data (>=
1.2-3), foo-data (<< 1.2-3.1) or (<< 1.3) should do the job.

A = should be avoided imho.

> 4. Also IMHO one should at the very least suggest the main package from the
>    -data package.  This helps the users of non-crappy apt frontends to
>    track the main package starting from the -data package.  Relying on
>    package naming alone for this is suboptimal at best.

Actualy I would love to have the naming policy set in stone and
frontends filter for them. There is no reason to list foo-data in the
package list but only foo. The frontends can do a simple check: if
($PKG depends on $PKG-data) then hide $PKG-data.

MfG
        Goswin



Reply to: