Re: Depends/Recommends from libraries
Marvin Renich <mrvn@renich.org> writes:
> If libbar-dev documents that it requires bar-daemon (and under what
> circumstances, if appropriate), but libbar does not declare the Depends,
> then it becomes the Debian maintainer of foo who decides to add an
> appropriate Depends, Recommends, or Suggests for bar-daemon, in addition
> to the Depends (that should be, but can't be, a Recommends or Suggests)
> on libbar.
And if you think the maintainer of foo is going to remember to do that,
well damn, why do we even bother with dpkg-shlibdeps? Our maintainers can
just hand-craft this stuff -- it's so easy!
Humans don't work this way.
> Every Debian maintainer whose package links libbar would then be
> required to read the documentation of libbar-dev, and act on that to add
> a dependency that libbar would have used. I would certainly expect a
> Debian maintainer to read said documentation (irregardless of Ian's
> proposal).
I would absolutely not expect that.
Let's please not create more situations where packaging requires careful
memory, multiple checklists, and human judgement. It is absolutely not
okay to require maintainers read all of the documentation of all dev
packages they depend on in order to hand-craft dependencies. This is not
how we make a better distribution or make Debian packaging easier or more
likely to be correct; this is how we end up with a bunch of frustrating
bugs.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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