Re: Spliting packages between pkg and pkg-data

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Thijs Kinkhorst]
> If package foo-data is useless when foo is not installed, foo-data
> should depend on package foo. This follows from policy manual 7.2: "The
> Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is required for
> the depending package to provide a significant amount of
> functionality.". Or am I missing something here?

I guess it is a philosofical question about the functionality provided
by foo-data.  If the provided functionality is "a set of data usable
by other packages, for example package 'foo', then it is providing its
functionality without a depend on foo.  If it is providing the
functionality "working program foo", then of course, it need to depend
on foo.

In my view, foo-data is providing the functionality "data for packages
needing them, for example package 'foo'", and foo provides the
functionality "working program foo".  From this perspective, foo-data
isn't useless without foo installed, it is perfectly usable as data
for any program capable of reading that data.