Re: Bug#217945: dpkg-dev: should depend on build-essential
Err, looks like Adam sent his message to -dpkg and -bugs-dist, instead of
to the bug number. Yick. :-/
On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 11:54:32AM -0600, Adam Heath wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > Mmm. That doesn't really help *our* users very much though, does it?
> Well, it's never been dpkg's design to enforce *debian* policy. Otherwise,
> tools like lintian and linda wouldn't be nescessary.
Mmmm. Having dpkg-checkbuilddeps behave differently on on Debian systems
than it potentially might on non-Debian systems wouldn't be a major
problem, and would be a boon for our users, assuming the different
behaviour (checking for build-essential) is actually possible.
> > I'm not sure what can be done about this anyway though -- if we add a
> > check for libc6-dev by whatever means, how do we cope with packages that
> > Build-Conflicts: libc6-dev?
> There is the libc6.1 issue as well. And hurd, *bsd, etc.
You know at build time whether it's libc6, libc6.1 or libc0.2 -- that
only depends on the arch. So that's easy to deal with -- at worst,
just hardcode some if/switch/case block.
But dealing with stuff that Build-Conflicts: on build-essential stuff
seems impossible to deal with. Can anyone see a way out of that?
> > But if there /is/ something that can be done, we should work out a way
> > of doing it.
> As far as dpkg is concerned, there isn't a problem(I'm sorry to say it like
> that, but that's how Wichert and I feel, when wearing our dpkg hats for this
> issue).
No offence, but the social contract says you're wrong. Certainly, I agree
that we want to keep a separation between policies like "build-essential"
and protocols like "Build-Depends:", but if it makes the most sense to
check one of the former policies in a tool in dpkg-dev.deb, that's the
way it needs to be done.
But that's irrelevant if it's just not possible to check that policy at all,
which is the way it seems to be to me.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
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