Re: Proposal, a Build-Depends-Optional field

[Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org>]

* Gianfranco Costamagna <costamagnagianfranco@yahoo.it>, 2015-05-25, 07:22:
> Problem: I have a package that might depend on a libfoo-dev library.
>
> "might" because it tries to detect it at configure time, and if the 
> libfoo is found some features are enabled, otherwise the features are 
> disabled.
>
> Since the libfoo isn't build on every architecture, I would like to 
> have some field in my control file, like "try to install it, if not 
> found just discard it",
[...]
> is something similar already implemented?

You can (sort of) implement it already. Create binary package 
maybe-libfoo-dev that depends on "libfoo-dev | dpkg". Then build-depend 
on this maybe-libfoo-dev.

It's a terrible idea, but it could be done.

--
Jakub Wilk