Re: [RFC] Adding pkg-config to build-essential
2016-09-17 14:06 Guillem Jover:
On Sat, 2016-09-17 at 11:26:05 +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
At which point do we consider a package Build-Essential?
It's not like every package actually uses gcc or make during build either.
If you had picked g++ that would have been a better example. :) But
make is used by all our sources via debian/rules, and gcc is used also
by all our sources via dpkg-architecture (both of which are not strong
dependencies by dpkg-dev, and should not be).
My question would be instead, why should we keep g++ as build-essential?
Would perhaps meta-packages like for example "build-essential-c++" be
worth considering?
Or do you think that g++ should be taken away and depended upon
explicitly in all cases?
Aside from the sheer number of packages requiring pkg-config, adding it
to build-essential would be an endorsement of pkg-config as the one
right tool to detect dependencies during configure.
I don't think Essential/build-essential are the right tools for this
kind of endorsements. Also, from your later message, I see where you
are coming from, but then I also think if the dependencies have
accidentally become implicit due to something else pulling them,
the correct course of action (even if painful!) is to fix those
dependencies.
I'm all for fixing this kind of things in the general case, but in the
case of Debian, having to do uploads for thousands of packages is the
kind of change that it's a real PITA to implement (and if undertaken,
takes years to complete, if ever).
Cheers.
--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo@gmail.com>
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