Re: Proposed pre-depends addition: all multiarched libs -> multiarch-support

[Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>]

On Tue, 05 Apr 2011 at 11:12:54 +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 02, 2011 at 12:36:05AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Specifically, the plan is that any package in wheezy shipping a runtime
> > library in a multiarch directory should declare a Pre-Depends on the
> > metapackage 'multiarch-support'.
> 
> And the dependency would be added by either dpkg-dev, debhelper, or
> dpkg-shlibdeps rather than being added to every single library by hand,
> right?

Because debhelper doesn't add any Pre-Depends yet, there's nowhere to put
the new dependency that would automatically be picked up. I believe the
current plan is that:

* debhelper adds multiarch-support to a new
  ${misc:Pre-Depends} substvar (which must be added to the library by hand)

* this is only relevant to packages that divert files into multiarch
  directories, which would only happen with package-specific changes anyway
  (bumping the debhelper compat level to 9, if nothing else)

* lintian should warn (error?) if a binary package has libraries in a multiarch
  directory and doesn't pre-depend on multiarch-support

* lintian should perhaps also warn if a package uses debhelper compat 9
  and doesn't pre-depend on ${misc:Pre-Depends}

Regards,
    S