On Thu, Jul 31, 2003 at 04:54:42PM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
> Hi,
>
> for practice and because I want to use it, I am working on a package of
> the CVS version of auctex, a LaTeX mode for Emacs. Since it's only an
> Emacs-addon written in Lisp, it's of course architecture independent.
>
> In debian/rules of the "real" package from unstable, binary requires
> binary-arch and binary-indep; the first does nothing and the second
> builds the package.
>
> In the original package's control file, there is a line of
> Build-Depends-Indep, but no Build-Depends. Does this make sense for a
> source package that has no architecture dependent binary packages at
> all? Why not just use Build-Depends here and use Build-Depends-Indep
> only when a source package yields both kinds of binary packages?
Because it is simpler to have two easily expressed rules ("Build-Depends
must be satisfied for <X> targets", "Build-Depends-Indep must be
satisfied for <Y> targets") than a complex set of exceptions
("Build-Depends must be satisfied for <X> on Arch: (!= all), or <Y> on
Arch: all, unless Build-Depends-Indep is also set, in which case....")
6 extra characters in the control file is a small price to pay for sanity,
especially because it allows some of us (namely, porters) to build *simple*
tools that figure out dependancy trees, and which can prune some parts of
them based on this information.
--
Joel Baker <fenton@debian.org>
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