Re: Bug#597340: dpkg-gencontrol: implicit substvar at the end of every field

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Raphaël Hertzog wrote:
>
>Every time that debhelper needs to adjust a dependency it provides a new
>substvar and the maintainer needs to put it in the right field. I was
>thinking that we could avoid the second half if some specific substvars
>was added at the end of every field.
>
>dpkg-gencontrol could be modified to always append the value of
>${implicit:<fieldname>} at the end of the corresponding field. Maybe
>we should even support multiple substvars (say
>${implicit:<fieldname>:<origin>}) so that there's no coordination problem
>if multiple tools want to add something at the end of the same field.
>
>This would even make it possible for debhelper to add dependencies that
>are not at all present in debian/control, like for example Breaks... this
>would have been handy for example when several dh_* tools have stopped
>doing their work on the assumption that the triggerized version of
>the postinst snippet was available on the system. With a break, it could
>ensure that the relevant package had been upgraded...
>
>With such a system, the ${misc:Depends} that we are currently adding
>everywhere would not have been needed.
>
>CCing -devel and Joey Hess to have some input on this idea. Do you think
>it would be useful ? Do you have comments and suggestions ?

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of (even more?) build-time package
settings being hidden away outside of debian/control. :-/

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
"I suspect most samba developers are already technically insane... Of
 course, since many of them are Australians, you can't tell." -- Linus Torvalds