Fwd: Correct way to detect JAR dependencies

Hi,

I trying to figure what is the correct way to declare dependencies of JAR files from other packages, I first asked this in debian-debel, but have been forwarded to this list, see forwarded message below.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jose Gutierrez de la Concha <jose@zeroc.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 10:50 PM
Subject: Correct way to detect JAR dependencies
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

Hi!

I'm upstream developer for zeroc-ice, in one of the packages build from this source zeroc-icegridgui, a bug has been reported regarding missing JAR dependencies (Bug#846498).

The package in question uses java:depends but that seems to not work here or maybe is not being used correctly:

https://github.com/zeroc-ice/ice-debian-packaging/blob/3.6/debian/control#L290-L293

dpkg produces a warning dpkg-gencontrol: warning: Depends field of package zeroc-icegridgui: unknown substitution variable ${java:Depends}

What is the correct way to declare the dependencies for JARs include in separate packages?

Regards,

José

José Gutiérrez de la Concha
ZeroC, Inc.