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Re: RFC: a new (meta data) field in .DEB packages



Hello,

On Sun, 22 May 2011, Gerold Jens Wucherpfennig wrote:
> For example package "libc6" will have set:
> 
> "Development-Package: libc6-dev"
> 
> So the package manager can examine all installed packages and
> will collect the data of the field: "Development-Package"
> 
> Then the package manager may ask the user if he wants to
> install all these packages in one turn ...
> 
> ... quite useful for all software
> developers and from-source-installing geeks :-)

I don't think this field is needed. First the "-dev" extension
is standardized and it's easy to guess the good package name.
Then if you want to program something that finds out the -dev for a
library, it's also relatively simple:
- find the source package of the library
- scan the list of binary package built by this source package
- filter out the "-dev" one
- if there's more than one -dev, you can try to select the one that
  depends on the library that you're interested in (or the one that
  matches the pattern "libfoo\d*-dev" (if libfooX is your library).

Adding a new field would mean manual work that's not needed because we
have more than enough info to identify the development packages.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Follow my Debian News ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.com (English)
                      ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.fr (Français)


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