Hi, On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 01:14:25PM +0100, Martin Baehr wrote: > On Mon, Feb 24, 2003 at 03:37:25PM -0800, John H. Robinson, IV wrote: > > to throw even more monkeywrenches in the gearbox, some people may have > > compiled an MTA outside of the packaging system, and be using qmail/ > > sendmail/postfix (the uspported MTA's) but not have it registered with > > apt/dpkg at all. > > well that is a slippery slope, > because with that argument you could kill any dependancies anywhere. > > if someone is replacing a package with something outside of debians > control than that person is responsible for telling debian that the > dependancy is fullfilled after all. if a mail-server is needed then > a mailserver is needed. therefore it should be listed as dependancy. Perhaps. However, I think that specifying a dependency on services that can be accessed using well defined protocols instead of library APIs is an equally slippery slope. For example, I'd truly hate it if something would specify a dependency on mysql-server when a package merely requires you to configure a hostname, username and password to a working database somewhere. As a suggestion: why not draw the border at network interfaces vs. programmatic interfaces? A package that that calls /usr/bin/sendmail -t to queue mail could depend on virtual package that supplies this interface, but a package that connects to port 25 somewhere should not, even though it depends on an MTA for correct operation. The same for port 80 or port 3306. It would be nice if standard programmatic interfaces such as the /usr/bin/sendmail example would always have virtual packages and an easy way for administrators to tell dpkg that something provides this common interface, without having to go out of your way to build a full package. I may be missing something that already exists though; in that case I appreciate any pointers you have. Cheers, Emile. -- E-Advies / Emile van Bergen | emile@e-advies.info tel. +31 (0)70 3906153 | http://www.e-advies.info
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