Do transitive dependencies need to be specified in the control file?

[Steinar Bang <sb@dod.no>]

Working on my karaf debian package
 https://github.com/steinarb/karaf-debian

I tried adding two dependencies, libjna-java and libjna-platform-java to the debian/control file:
Depends: adduser, default-jre (>=1.8), libosgi-core-java (>=6), libjna-java (>=4.2.2), libjna-platform-java (>=4.2.2)

However, that wasn't enough to make apt-get pull in the dependencies:
 root@lorenzo:~# apt-get install karaf
 Reading package lists... Done
 Building dependency tree       
 Reading state information... Done
 karaf is already the newest version (4.1.4-9~9.30).
 You might want to run 'apt --fix-broken install' to correct these.
 The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  karaf : Depends: libjna-java (>= 4.2.2) but it is not going to be installed
          Depends: libjna-platform-java (>= 4.2.2) but it is not going to be installed
 E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt --fix-broken install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
 root@lorenzo:~#

I tried the suggested command and it added libjna-jni as a dependency to
be installed:
 Reading package lists... Done
 Building dependency tree       
 Reading state information... Done
 Correcting dependencies... Done
 The following additional packages will be installed:
   libjna-java libjna-jni libjna-platform-java
 Suggested packages:
   libjna-java-doc
 The following NEW packages will be installed:
   libjna-java libjna-jni libjna-platform-java
 0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 13 not upgraded.
 1 not fully installed or removed.
 Need to get 968 kB of archives.
 After this operation, 1,231 kB of additional disk space will be used.
 Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
 Abort.
 root@lorenzo:~#

Do I need to add transitive dependencies to my control file? (I thought
APT took care of that...?)

Or is this an artifact of the faked "repo" I use to test my package?

I have this in /etc/apt/sources.list:
 deb file:///tmp repo/

I add new version of my package there by:
 mv ~/git/karaf_4.1.4-9~9.30_all.deb /tmp/repo
 (cd /tmp; dpkg-scanpackages repo >repo/Packages)

Is this simple faked APT repo the reason apt-get can't resolve the
libjna-jni dependency without help?

Thanks!


- Steinar