debhelper: please set an empty value for misc:Depends when not defined (was: Re: another patch/tag)
Package: debhelper
Severity: wishlist
Version: 7.0.17
Hi Joey,
Sorry for the large reference, but hope it is useful.
Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 03:31:06PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Frank Lichtenheld <djpig@debian.org> writes:
>>
>> > I like the general idea of this tag. But given the fact that only
>> > rarely used debhelper commands actually use misc:Depends I would either
>> > first check if the program actually uses those and only then issue the
>> > tag or would go for info for now and discuss this on debian-devel first
>> > before making it a warning.
>>
>> I'd also get a lot of warnings from this since I usually only list
>> misc:Depends for the packages that actually need it, but there's no
>> simple way of telling which binary packages would pick up misc:Depends.
>>
>> Unfortunately, listing it without having anything use it results in a
>> warning during the package build, so a lot of people fix the warning by
>> removing it (understandably).
>
> Right, I thought of that, too but then forgot to mention it in the mail.
> This should probably be changed in dpkg-dev or debhelper before making
> this a warning (e.g. by always defining misc:Depends to the empty string
> if it is not used).
I don't believe dpkg-dev should do anything about it (in any case it should
better just don't warn at all), dh_gencontrol could check for the presence
of misc:Depends in the substvars file before calling dpkg-gencontrol and
add an empty value.
>
> Gruesse,
Cheers,
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