Re: Depends on -dev package

["Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org>]

* Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> [110822 21:47]:
> There are not, so far as I know, any exceptions for -dev packages from the
> normal requirements for Depends, which say simply:
>
>     The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is
>     required for the depending package to provide a significant amount of
>     functionality.
>
> and given that C -dev packages are unusable in general without libc6-dev
> installed, that would, on the surface, seem to qualify.

I think this is the old general discussion what "useful" is. A pdf
viewer is not useful without a pdf file to view, still a pdf viewer
should of course not depend on some package with pdf files in it.

I think some good heuristic is usually looking at what you need and
if it is needed anyway in the process of using something.
If you compile a program, you will usually need libc development files
anyway, so having them around is not really a new requirement (just like
having a compiler). There is also not really a way to express what you
need, as there are so many of them, you either need libc6-dv or
libc0.1-dev or libc0.3-dev or libc6.1-dev or perhaps of the multilib
files and so on.

So not being able to express what you need and missing a realistic use
case where only using this -dev package introduces the requirement, I
think it is rather clear that this dependency is not needed.

	Bernhard R. Link