Bug#131347: lintian could check for -dev package dependencies

[Junichi Uekawa <dancer@netfort.gr.jp>]

Hi,

> > There are many -dev packages which do not declare dependency on
> > necessary -dev packages.
> > 
> > It might be nice to issue warnings on lib*-dev packages which 
> > have Depends: line with no lib*-dev dependencies against 
> > those which are in Build-Depends.
> 
> Thinking about this for a bit, I don't think this is something that would
> ever be useful to do, unfortunately.
> 
> This approach would make the assumption that any lib*-dev package required
> to build a package containing a library should also be a dependency of the
> development version of the library.  Putting aside whether it's worth
> keeping such a dependency only for static linking when the one library
> completely hides the usage of the other, this fails for large packages
> that produce multiple binary packages.  Consider a package that builds a
> library that depends on nothing but libc and a separate binary package of
> executables that depend on both it and, say, LDAP libraries.  The LDAP
> -dev package will be in Build-Depends, but the library -dev package should
> not depend on it.

Such case is an exception, which needs to be properly done, and is not
something which is usually done. As you have explained yourself, the
exceptional case is:

1. when there is no static library

and

2. when the library hides the shared library it uses from the end-users of the library.



regards,
	junichi
-- 
dancer@{debian.org,netfort.gr.jp}   Debian Project