Re: NMU and ./configure
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <gaia@iki.fi> wrote:
>On 20000928T012303+0100, Colin Watson wrote:
>> I couldn't see it in policy, which was why I weakened my original
>> statement.
>
> If build-time dependencies are specified, it must be possible to build
> the package and produce working binaries on a system with the
> build-essential packages installed and satisfying the build-time
> relationships (including any implied relationships). This means in
> particular that version clauses should be used rigorously in
> build-time relationships so that one cannot produce bad or
> inconsistently configured packages when the relationships are properly
> satisfied.
>(Section 2.4.2)
>
>That's meant to say what you wanted, perhaps the wording could be
>improved.
OK, I interpreted that as saying "it must not break" rather than "it
must be identical". Does "consistent" mean "internally consistent" or
"consistent among all builds of that package"?
>> I was going to leave out the version clause, except I thought that it
>> probably wasn't true: for instance, building a package with the slink
>> version of debhelper will produce a package with documentation in
>> /usr/doc, whereas building a package with the potato version of
>> debhelper will produce a package with documentation in /usr/share/doc
>> and the /usr/doc symlink.
>
>In that case a versioned build-dependency to debhelper is appropriate.
Why? Isn't the above behaviour exactly what somebody building a package
on an older system would expect and want? It's been very useful to me in
the past to be often able to backport potato packages to slink with
minimal hacking and a rebuild. Or are people doing that expected to
ignore versioned build-dependencies? Otherwise, bugs should be filed
against basically everyone using unversioned debhelper
build-dependencies ... I guess it would get rid of the permanent
floating argument about making it build-essential.
Packages that actually rely on documentation being in a specific place
(for instance, if they mention /usr/share/doc explicitly elsewhere in
debian/rules) should still use versioned build-depends, of course.
--
Colin Watson [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]
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