Bug#255593: lintian: should check build-depends(-indep) for virtual packages without a real package too
On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 12:59:18AM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 21, 2004 at 11:30:26PM +0200, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> > Package: lintian
> > Version: 1.23.0
> > Severity: normal
> > Tags: patch
> >
> > As of 1.23.0, lintian correctly catches errors of the form:
> >
> > Depends: mail-transport-agent
> >
> > (This is an error since mail-transport-agent is a virtual package, it
> > should be "exim | mail-transport-agent".) The included patch extends
> > this to also checking Build-Depends: and Build-Depends-Indep:.
>
> Is this really an error? If it's OK for absolutely any provider to be
> installed, then fine. If some particular provider is better, why not
> build-depend on it explicitly rather than alternate?
>
> The Depends: error is there because listing the real alternative
> apparently makes some package management front-ends behave better, but
> this doesn't apply to build-dependencies.
Apparantly, it does, I didn't test myself, but the whole reason this
came up on IRC is that it didn't work with pure virtual
build-dependency.
--Jeroen
--
Jeroen van Wolffelaar
Jeroen@wolffelaar.nl (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357)
http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl
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