[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Binary depends



On Thu, May 23, 2002 at 06:39:16PM -0400, Bob Hilliard wrote:
>      I have just discovered (via a bug report) that dict and dictd
> depend on netbase.  (dict and dictd communicate with each other using
> the TCP/IP protocol.)  Since dictd has been in debian for over four
> years without declaring the dependency, this indicates that netbase is
> almost universally installed! :-)

>     Is there any tool, comparable to dpkg-shlibs, to determine
> non-library dependencies?

How would you propose to detect such a dependency?  Library dependencies
are easily detected; they're listed in a definitive location in every
ELF binary, and all libraries listed there are definitely dependencies
because the binary won't run without them.  Dependencies on other
programs, OTOH, can only be identified using heuristics, or by simply
knowing your package very well:  any tool that (e.g.) tries to grep
through the package sources to find out what other programs it
references will turn up lots of false positives on packages that *can*
use particular binaries if present, but don't really depend on those
external binaries.

Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

Attachment: pgpqEYspB6t3s.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Reply to: