Re: Another take on package relationship substvars

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Fri, 2024-02-23 at 17:59:14 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> One generic case that this doesn't handle is Essential: yes packages.  For
> many of these, the ${shlibs:Depends} gets promoted in debian/control to
> Pre-Depends, not to Depends.

Ah! Good point.

I think the particular case of the Essential: yes and Pre-Depends
should really be handled by dpkg-shlibdeps. So I've now implemented a
new --package option for it, that will grab the package information
from debian/control, and if it is «Essential: yes» it will change the
default from Depends to Pre-Depends (in addition to also setting the
default Package-Type, so no need for explicit -t anymore), and the
package name will be added to -x. If -p is not passed, then it will
behave as now.

This, combined with the upcoming implicit substvar support should then
by default give the expected behavior (which can always be overridden).

Thanks,
Guillem