Re: Depends/Recommends from libraries

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Thibaut Paumard writes ("Re: Depends/Recommends from libraries"):
> 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.

This is perhaps a nice example.  Mind if I ask some questions ?

You say "an option to provide MPI paralellisation".  Is this option
enabled by default ?  Does it occur with all useful functions in the
library ?  Do library callers control over whether it occurs ?

Are there any programs linked against libgyoto which actually call
into libgyoto only some of the time (perhaps, rarely) ?  (I did a
quick search and it seems that libgyoto's rdependency stack is quite
short.  There's some python modules and something to do with yorick,
but they are all explicitly gyoto-related; and there are some blend
metapackages, which are fine.  So maybe the answer to this is no, but
maybe it will become yes in the future.)

Ian.

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