Re: Depends on -dev package
"Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org> writes:
> Should we then also list -data packages not usually depending on the
> non-data package and not the other way around.
-data packages *should* depend on the non-data package in an ideal world,
and the only reason why they don't is because circular dependencies are a
bigger problem. But -data packages are generally unusable without the
corresponding main package, so indeed, this is a special case (and has
been discussed as such on debian-devel).
> How about documents depending on viewers but not viewers depending on
> documents?
The former makes sense except that we generally provide documentation in a
variety of formats including ones that are readable, at a pinch, without a
viewer. Also, most of the formats that I could see us shipping documents
in have so many possible viewers that it's not clear that a dependency is
useful. But sure, if the package contains, say, only a ZIP file of
documentation, it should depend on unzip.
The latter doesn't make sense to me; why would a viewer depend on any
specific package containing documents? The viewer is fully usable without
any packaged documents to view documents that don't come with Debian (and,
indeed, that's probably the most common use).
> And so on and so forth...
So far, you're not convincing me. :)
>> (My inclination would be to write an explicit exception into Policy
>> saying that C -dev packages do not have to declare dependencies on any
>> package that's part of build-essential.)
> build-essential is quite big. I'd really hate to see this.
What packages in build-essential do you think C -dev packages should
be required to declare explicit dependencies on? dpkg-dev is the only one
that seems like it could pose any problem, and it's going to be pretty
rare for that to be any sort of issue since C -dev packages aren't likely
to care about dpkg-dev one way or the other.
Note that I explicitly said, and meant, "part of build-essential," not "in
the transitive closure of build-essential's dependencies."
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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