Re: Depends/Recommends from libraries
Le 08/03/2017 à 23:33, Adam Borowski a écrit :
> Hi, mortals and paultag!
>
> I'd like to discuss (and then propose to -policy) the following rule:
>
> # Libraries which don't provide a convenient means of conditionally loading
> # at runtime (this includes most libraries for languages such as C), SHOULD
> # NOT declare a "Depends:" or "Recommends:" relationship, directly or
> # indirectly, on packages containing anything more than dormant files.
> # Those include, among others, daemons, executables in $PATH, etc. Any such
> # relationship should be instead declared by programs that use the library
> # in question -- it is up to them to decide how important the relationship
> # is.
Hi,
This doesn't seem to make sense to me. You list a number of examples
where the outcome of a dependency or recommendation chain is not
desirable. That means that those packages may be improved by breaking
this chain, which doesn't need to go through a policy amendment.
There are quite legitimate uses for dependencies or recommendations in
libraries. For instance, tne library that I maintain (libgyoto) has the
option to provide MPI paralellisation. This requires an external
executable, which is provided in a separate package. The external tool
is in a separate package because it can exist only for one architecture
at a time on the system (it lives in /usr/bin), while the library lives
in a multi-arch directory.
Kind regards, Thibaut.
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