Re: Bug#167585: med-dent: dependency nonsense woth database

[Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de>]

On Sun, 3 Nov 2002, Thilo Pfennig wrote:

> Package: med-dent
> Version: 0.4-2 (not installed)
> Severity: normal
>
> Many packages that do need a database make a dependency on a database.
> But if you think about it, it is nonsense: A database on the same server
> should rather be a suggestion!
I would like to set this on topic for a discussion.  You are right, that
a client system really does not need a database system.  The client
system in this special case just needs a browser.  How to comply with that
in the current case?

> We have one database server and different clients. I do not need to have
> postgres to run odontolinux, because the server allready has it. This is
> similar to many internet applications: many do need a functional
> nameserver, but this does not have to be on every client!
>
> The question should be asked: What ist the address of the database server?
Currently I only see the following solutions

  A) Building two packages:
     1. med-dent-server (depending from OdontoLinux and thus implicitely
        from PostgreSQL)
        Please note: med-dent does not depend from a database at all.
        It just depends from odontolinux thus your bug report is wrong
        and should go to the later package.  I just keep it here for
        common discussion and will reassign later if there is a common
        sense about a solution because it will affect other med-*
        packages in the future.
        To add more here it also depends from PHP which is also not
        needed on the client side.

     2. med-dent-client (depending from a web browser and asking via
        debconf which should be the server)

  B) Asking via debconf whether the system should run client and server
     and install the required server stuff (PostgreSQL, PHP, etc.)
     afterwards.  To my knowledge currently there exists no clean solution
     to call dpkg / apt from debconf to install further packages und
     thus this solution would require changes in dpkg code or dirty
     hacking.

I'm not really sure what should be done here.  Any opinions.

Kind regards

         Andreas.