Re: Proposal of two new control fields: Build-Recommends and Build-Suggests [long reading]
On Mon, 09 Feb 2009, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> - Build-Recommends would list packages that are basically available
> in the Debian archive, but are not available on all architectures or
> for all kernels.
Unfortunatly, making missing build-dependencies a non-fatal error
causes builds to be non-deterministic.
For example, consider a case where libasound2-dev was a no longer
provided due to an API change to libasound3-dev, and for whatever
reason, libasound3-dev wasn't installable on some arch subsets
(perhaps because libasound3 hadn't yet been built.)
> Why have I added libfaad-dev to the Build-Recommends? Because in
> Ubuntu ffmpeg-debian is in the main section, while faad2 is not. So
> in order to merge ffmpeg-debian to Ubuntu, the maintainer has to
> manually remove this Build-Depends each and every time. As soon as
> Ubuntu would support the suggested approach, this would be obsolete.
I wouldn't be averse to some method of describing additional types of
conditional dependencies, such as differentiating builds of packages
on Debian and Ubuntu. [A hideous method of doing this[1]:
Build-Depends: libfaad-dev | some-only-in-ubuntu-package.]
Don Armstrong
1: In fact, forget that I even mentioned this method; it's all kinds
of ugly.
--
Let us chat together a moment, my friend. There are still several
hours until dawn, and I have the whole day to sleep.
-- Count Orlock in _Nosferatu (1922)_
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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