Bug#441807: lintian: Please check data package depends
On Tue, Sep 11, 2007 at 02:17:57PM +0200, Bas Wijnen wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2007 at 02:02:15PM +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 11, 2007 at 12:41:21PM +0200, Bas Wijnen wrote:
> > > It would be nice if lintian would complain about improper or missing
> > > dependencies for -data packages. That is, if both $package and
> > > $package-data are defined in debian/control, $package should have
> > > Depends: $package-data (= ${source:version})
> >
> > Huh? May it should or maybe not. There is really no way to tell...
>
> Well, by convention -data packages are just the arch: all parts of the
> package. In general, there is a hard dependency on it. Perhaps not
> always, but then the packages are at least confusingly named. And if
> there is a good reason, it is so rare (I expect) that an override is in
> order. Or do you see "normal" cases where such a depends is not needed?
The only common reason I see to use a = dependency is a shared
/usr/share/doc repository (and that is for legal reasons, not really
for technical ones). Most other -data packages could probably happily
live with some kind of >= dependency. And I would oppose encouraging
maintainers to use overly strict dependencies.
Maybe a check for _any_ Dependency (i.e. a Depends, Recommends, or Suggests)
on the -data package would be useful, but anything else sounds very prone to
produce _harmful_ false positives.
> > > Perhaps there should also be a warning if $package-data does not have
> > > Recommends: $package
> > > (with any version, I suppose.)
> >
> > Why not Suggests? Why any at all?
>
> Assuming still that the -data package just contains arch: all parts of
> the other one, it is useless without the other one. So it will only be
> installed without it in very unusual situations, which is what
> Recommends is for.
Fair enough. I still wouldn't issue a warning if there is a Suggests on
the package.
Gruesse,
--
Frank Lichtenheld <djpig@debian.org>
www: http://www.djpig.de/
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