Charles Plessy <charles-debian-nospam@plessy.org> writes:
> I wanted to use /usr/bin/rename in a rules files, and wondered if it
> would be present in minimal installs and chroots. To my surprise,
> although this program is available on my computer running Etch from a
> fresh install, no Debian package contains rename anymore (it was
> provided by perl in Sarge).
rename is managed by the alternatives system (always the first thing to
check if dpkg -S claims that something isn't provided by a package). The
only package that I can find that provides the alternative is perl.
> Can I use it safely for building a package since I can not build-depend
> on it and it does not seem to be contained in an essential package ?
You do need a build-depends since prename is provided by perl, not
perl-base.