Re: Packages violating policy 8.2
Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb@becket.net> writes:
> Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> writes:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Debian policy says:
>>
>> | 8.2 Run-time support programs
>> |
>> | If your package has some run-time support programs which use the
>> | shared library you must not put them in the shared library
>> | package. If you do that then you won't be able to install several
>> | versions of the shared library without getting filename clashes.
>> |
>> | Instead, either create another package for the runtime binaries
>> | (this package might typically be named libraryname-runtime; note the
>> | absence of the soversion in the package name), or if the development
>> | package is small, include them in there.
>>
>> After seeing several packages that violate 8.2 I set out to find out
>> how common that is:
>
> What about runtime support programs whose purpose is to print
> information for use in autoconf tests belonging to other programs
> which want to use the library?
I would call those "compile-time support programs" and as the name
indicates they should be in the -dev package. I filed a bug against
policy clarifying the "or if the development package is small, include
them in there." to cover that meaning.
A foobar-config program to get the right CFLAGS and LDFLAGS certainly
does not need to be present without the header files.
For multiarch this will be an inconvenience though as people might
want to install both 32bit and 64bit of a -dev package. For such small
scripts spliting them into extra packages seems wrong but then you
have to use alternatives or similar to avoid conflicts.
MfG
Goswin
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