Re: no{thing} build profiles
* Sune Vuorela <nospam@vuorela.dk> [181021 06:05]:
> On 2018-10-21, Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> wrote:
> > I disagree that libgpgme11 should depend/recommend/suggest gnupg at all:
> > As a library it cannot possibly declare how tight a relationship to
> > declare - instead, all _consumers_ of the library must declare whether
> > they depend/recommend/suggest gnupg.
>
> libgpgme is completely useless without gnupg. I think it is perfectly
> fine for these kind of relations, unless we really are in corner-case
> territory. See for example fam.
I strongly agree with Jonas. Upstream links to libgpgme as a .so to
provide optional behavior. This requires libgpgme to be installed in
order to even run neomutt, whether the user wants the feature or not.
It is perfectly reasonable to want to install neomutt but want to _not_
install gnupg.
The proper fix is to convince upstream to dynamically link at runtime
and disable some features if libgpgme is not available. However, this
(IMO wrong) upstream behavior is pervasive, and trying to get all
upstreams to use runtime linking for optional behavior is a very steep
uphill battle that we cannot win.
However, correcting Debian package dependencies is something that Debian
can do without involving upstream. The Debian library package should
Recommend, rather than Depend, the package.
The -dev package should clearly document what packages need to be
installed for the linked .so file to be useful, and the packages linking
to the library should choose Depends or Recommends for the leaf package
(e.g. gnupg) based on whether the top package (e.g. neomutt) will be
broken or just have less functionality if the library returns "function
not available".
If the library crashes, rather than returning an error, if the
depended-on package (gnupg in this case) is not installed, that is a
real (serious, IMO) bug that upstream should fix. Usually, however, the
library will do the right thing. The same applies to the package
calling the library.
Having a library that may reasonably be used solely to provide optional
behavior bring in a significant amount of potentially unwanted software
is simply bad behavior, as well as being contrary to Policy definition
of Depends and Recommends. While the library is usually used with the
leaf package installed, it is perfectly useful for shared linking for
optional behavior even when the leaf package is not installed. This is
exactly the definition of Recommends.
...Marvin
Reply to: