Re: Bug#365087: ITP: debcheck -- Checks whether dependencies of debian packages can be satisfied
On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 05:30:48PM -0400, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 09:53:20PM +0200, Ralf Treinen wrote:
> > Package: wnpp
> > Severity: wishlist
> > Owner: Ralf Treinen <treinen@debian.org>
> >
> > * Package name : debcheck
> > Version : as of 2006/3/19
> > Upstream Author : Jerome Vouillon <Jerome.Vouillon@pps.jussieu.fr>
> > * URL : http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~vouillon/
> > * License : GPL
> > Programming Lang: Objective Caml
> > Description : Checks whether dependencies of debian packages can be satisfied
> >
> > This software checks for every package of a distribution (in the
> > debian format .deb) whether it is possible to satisfy its dependencies
> > and conflicts within this distribution.
>
> Looking at the docs the tool seems to be able to work on any set of
> debian packages provided as Packages entries provided on standard input.
> I would thus rephrase the above paragraph as:
>
> This software checks for a set of Debian packages (provided as
> Packages entries) whether it is possible to satisfy the dependencies
> and conflicts of all involved packages within the set.
>
> Better to ask for an advice of a native English speaker, but my point is
> to emphasize "the set of packages" rather then "the distribution".
You are right. My usage of the word "distribution" comes from the
terminology of the edos project
http://www.edos-project.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome
(where this tool, and many others, originated). In the context of this
project a distribution is a set of packages containing possibly
multiple versions of a package name. The debian reading of the
word "distribution" excludes this.
> > Preliminary packages are available at
> > http://people.debian.org/~treinen/debcheck/
>
> I suggest to add to the manpage an hint that the Packages file is a
> suitable input for the tool.
For the moment it is in the EXAMPLES section of the manpage, but I'll
make this more explicit.
> I saw that there is also an rpmcheck tool, which does the same for .rpm
> packages. Don't you plan to package this as well? What about providing
> an unique binary package (maybe called "pkgcheck") with the two
> binaries?
For the moment I create two binary packages, one with the debcheck tool
for deb packages, and another one with the rpmcheck tool which does the
analogous thing on rpm packages. I forgot to mention this in my ITP.
> If you are worried about the size: upstream links them separately and
> they are 130 Kb each, but I'm pretty confident that linking a single
> executable with two different names and the usual speculation about
> Sys.argv.(0) would dramatically cut down the total size ...
I'll have a look into this, thanks for the suggestion.
-Ralf.
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