Re: Bug#136110: md5sum binary should be from textutils, not dpkg

[Jor-el <jorel@trillian.megadodo.umb>]

On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Glenn McGrath wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Feb 2002 17:24:57 -0500
> "Andres Salomon" <dilinger@voxel.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> There is also a c library providing md5, one from libwww0 (packaged) and
> another unpackaged libmd5 project
> (ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/packages/md5.tar.gz).
> 
> Ive been thinking for a while that md5 is generally usefull enough to be a
> seperate package, even though its small its still good to reuse code.
> 
> If dpkg wanted to use the unpackaged libmd5 i would be prepared to package
> it.
> 
Glenn,

	I think 'dpkg' is an example of the case where code reuse of the 
nature you mention is not necessarily a good thing. Adding additional
build dependancies for dpkg is not a good thing if one considers the
porting to a new OS / architecture problem. I am in the middle of a port
to AIX and have found out that some sgml packages have to be available
first to build dpkg docs. Which I cant install as a deb unless I first
complete the port of dpkg. In general, I think the less chicken and egg
type problems there are with dpkg the better. 

Regards,
Jor-el