dependency bootstrapping problem

[Matt Kraai <kraai@alumni.cmu.edu>]

Howdy,

The current WordNet package does not allow database errors to be
fixed.  Thus, I'm creating a new source package, wordnet-grind,
which will allow this.  There would then be two source packages
for WordNet: wordnet-grind would be used to generate
wordnet-base, and wordnet would be used to wordnet, wordnet-dev,
and wordnet-doc.

The problem is that wordnet-dev provides a header file required
to build wordnet-base, so wordnet-grind must build-depend upon
it.  wordnet-dev depends on wordnet, which depends on
wordnet-base, and so it cannot be installed until wordnet-base
is built.

Here are the solutions I've considered:

 * merge them into one source package.  This would diverge from
   upstreams distribution model.

 * copy the header file into wordnet-grind.  This would have to
   be kept in sync manually.

 * build wordnet-dev and force its installation.  This is
   a pain for other package builders.

Any suggestions?

Matt