Re: force libc6 >= 2.2 in autossh

[Dan Christensen <jdc@uwo.ca>]

James Troup <james@nocrew.org> writes:

> Filippo Giunchedi <filippo@esaurito.net> writes:
>
>> Sorry but I can't really understand, writing a debian/shlibs.local file
>> overriding libc6 version is possible and supposed to work. Is it wrong or bad
>> pratice? I know it isn't the Right Way, I'm only trying to understand what I'm
>> probably missing.
>
> Sorry but it's stupid.  If you don't do it for every architecture, it
> doesn't get you anywhere.  If you're going to do it for every
> architecture, you have to have tested it.  Can/would you really check
> it on all 11 architectures?

How is this different from all the other dependencies in Debian?  A
package can stop working when some package it depends on changes.  If
this happens without the maintainer noticing, a bug gets filed and the
problem gets fixed.

We don't insist that every Depends: foo be Depends: foo (>= 1.2.3)
where 1.2.3 is the current unstable version.  (Do we even insist
on this for other libraries?)

I realize the libc6 plays a more central role than many other
packages, but still, I don't see the difference in principle.  The
developer can read the Changelog for libc6 and see if anything their 
package uses has changed.

It's really quite a pain to have these versioned dependencies, so
that's why I'm asking for a more complete justification.

Thanks,

Dan