Re: Versionned dependencies

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

Tanguy Ortolo wrote:
> Packages can currenctly declared dependencies on specific versions of
> other packages, with simple relations: <<, <=, =, >= and >>. For
> instance:
>     Package: xul-ext-adblock-plus
>     Depends: iceweasel (>= 3.6.13) | iceape (>= 2.1) | …
> 
> While this is sufficient for most cases, it does not cover one
> interesting case: a dependencies on a range of versions. For instance:
>     Package: xul-ext-adblock-plus
>     Depends: iceweasel (>= 3.6.13, << 12.0~a1+) | iceape (>= 2.1, << 2.9~a1+) | …

In the particular case of iceweasel, the "compatible by default" change
(in upstream version 10) should help in the future for many addons.


More generally, it would help greatly to have one level of grouping in
dependencies:

Package: xul-ext-adblock-plus
Depends: (iceweasel (>= 3.6.13), iceweasel (<< 12.0~)) | (iceape ...

This would also help in various other cases:

Depends: some-package (<< 1~split) | (some-package (>= 1~split), some-package-important-piece)

I currently have some personal metapackages which work on a wide range
of package versions; they often have to write things like this (which I
just realized I can drop since I no longer care about pre-squeeze
systems):
Depends:
 printer-driver-hpcups | hplip-cups | hplip,
 printer-driver-hpcups | hplip-cups | hpijs-ppds,

I'd much rather write that as:

Depends: printer-driver-hpcups | hplip-cups | (hplip, hpijs-ppds)

- Josh Triplett