ant dependency on jython and antlr
Hi java maintainers,
Since version 1.5.3-2, the package ant depends on jython and antlr. The
justification was:
* Depend on the previously suggested packages jython and antlr to avoid
dangling symlinks in /usr/share/ant/lib
The Debian policy, section 7.2, says:
* Depends
This declares an absolute dependency. A package will not be configured
unless all of the packages listed in its Depends field have been
correctly configured.
The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is required
for the depending package to provide a significant amount of functionality.
[...]
* Suggests
This is used to declare that one package may be more useful with one or
more others. Using this field tells the packaging system and the user
that the listed packages are related to this one and can perhaps enhance
its usefulness, but that installing this one without them is perfectly
reasonable.
It seems pretty clear that ant does not *depend* on jython or antlr,
since those are not required for ant to "provide a significant amount of
functionality." The Suggests was probably right.
Now I understand the technical problem there was with the dangling
symlink. However, I think the propoer solution for this would be to have
the link in the jython and antlr packages, respectively. They should
probably suggest ant, too.
Note that this is what the eclipse-javac package does: it includes the
ant link:
$ dpkg -L eclipse-javac|grep ant/lib
/usr/share/ant/lib
/usr/share/ant/lib/jdtCompilerAdapter.jar
/usr/share/ant/lib/jdtcore.jar
$ ls -l /usr/share/ant/lib/jdtcore.jar
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 60 Aug 3 15:28
/usr/share/ant/lib/jdtcore.jar ->
../../eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.jdt.core_2.1.1/jdtcore.jar
Eclipse-javac should additionally at least suggest ant, I think.
Does everybody agree? Should this be made part of the Java policy? Here
is my proposal:
"If a package provides ant tasks, it should include a symlink from
/usr/share/ant/lib/<package-name><suffix>.jar to the jar file including
the task. It should also at least suggest the package ant."
Cheers,
Daniel
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