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

Re: advice about splitting a package (libtiff-tools)



I think I'll reply to my own post.  I brought this up on IRC and was
pointed to a better solution.

>   The libtiff package (upstream) includes one program, tiffgt, that
>   requires opengl.  The current version of libtiff in debian installs
>   tiffgt's manual page but does not install tiffgt.  (This is bug
>   219456.)  I have built new libtiff packages that create tiffgt, which
>   seems like a reasonable program to include.  I have two packaging
>   choices, both of which I have successfully implemented, but I wanted
>   some opinions on which way was better.
>
>    1.  Just add the necessary libraries to Build-Depends so that tiffgt
>        gets built.  This is the easiest solution, but it has the
>        disadvantage of having libtiff-tools get a bunch of extra
>        dependencies (X and opengl libraries) just to support one
>        program.
>
>    2.  Split libtiff-tools into libtiff-tools and libtiff-opengl, where
>        the latter contains only tiffgt and its manual page.  This is
>        also really easy, but there's one catch: older versions of
>        libtiff-tools already include the manual page for tiffgt, which
>        means libtiff-opengl must conflict with versions of libtiff-tools
>        that are older than this new version.  This means that someone
>        installing libtiff-opengl without first upgrading libtiff-tools
>        will have libtiff-tools REMOVED.  To work around this, I could
>        make libtiff-opengl require libtiff-tools >= the minimum version
>        instead of making it conflict with the old version, but I don't
>        want to do this because libtiff-opengl doesn't actually depend
>        upon libtiff-tools.
>
>   So, should I include tiffgt in libtiff-tools and just not worry about
>   all the new dependencies, or should I deal with this short-lived but
>   annoying problem of people possibly installing libtiff-opengl without
>   first upgrading libtiff-tools and losing libtiff-tools as a result?
>   Most people will have all those libraries on their systems anyway, and
>   I suspect not many people running systems without X will bother with
>   libtiff-tools.

Use Replaces instead of Conflicts.  This will enable the new
libtiff-opengl to overwrite and claim ownership of tiffgt.1.gz.  Since
Replaces will appear without Conflicts, libtiff-tools won't get
removed.  When it gets upgraded, tiffgt.1.gz will not be removed.
Once libtiff-opengl is installed, it will no longer be possible to
install an older version of libtiff-tools, but I don't consider that
to be important.

>   Thanks for any advice.

You're welcome.  Actually, thank doogie on IRC.

-- 
Jay Berkenbilt <ejb@ql.org>
http://www.ql.org/q/



Reply to: