Re: Build-Depend on virtual packages
On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 01:51:23AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 10:15:30AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > [ Mail-Followup-To: set to debian-mentors only ]
>
> > On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 09:57:25AM +0200, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> > > You can't Build-Depend on virtual packages.
>
> > Ok, time to settle down this issue.
>
> > We do, all ocaml packages build depends on ocaml-3.08.3 a virtual
> > package provided by ocaml. What's the problem with that? It has worked
> > properly for two years or so.
>
> Then you've been lucky. I don't think I've ever seen a clear statement that
> virtual build dependencies *should* work, but they usually *do* work --
> *except* when there are bugs, which has happened from time to time. It
> seems that sbuild particularly likes to object to build-dependencies on
> virtual packages that were once real packages (e.g., libmysqlclient-dev ->
> libmysqlclient12-dev). As a result, it seems to generally be more robust to
> build-dep on a real package when possible.
Let's make them working a etch release goal, ok ? Notice though that this is
something a bit different than other usages of the virtual packages, since the
virtual package is not used as an alternative thingy, but provided by one and
one only real packages, and thus there should be no theoretical difficulty in
making it happen.
Notice that i mentioned this to elmo and aj in oslo already, during
debconf'03. elmo was not so interested, but aj mentioned it was a reasonable
use of virtual packages.
And to stefano, the problem was mostly with the autobuilders logic being too
broken to handle virtual packages correctly and needing hand intervention.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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