Re: Bug#119517: pcmcia-cs: cardinfo binary needs to move into a separate package

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Brian" == Brian Mays <brian@debian.org> writes:


    Brian> My argument is as follows:

    Brian> Programs fail to run for all sorts of reasons and often do
    Brian> not give friendly error messages, help text, etc.  Problems
    Brian> are not only caused by missing libraries, but also missing
    Brian> data or other executables that the program expects to run.
    Brian> I fail to see the difference between a program that is
    Brian> useless because a library is missing and a program that is
    Brian> useless because it is a frontend for another program that
    Brian> is missing.  The program in question does not even need to
    Brian> be useless altogether; many programs fail in unusual or
    Brian> confusing ways when the user activates an obscure feature
    Brian> of the program that requires data or other programs that
    Brian> are missing.

And all of these are bugs. And if the bug is sufficiently frustrating
to the user, it is a serious bug because it makes te package
unsuitable for release.  If no part of the package functions because
of such a bug it may even be grave or critical.

I'd be perfectly happy with a package that wanted some shared library
only recommending or suggesting that shared library, provided that a
wrapper script was included for the programs that did not function
without the shared library to provide a useful error.

Note that even if you include the wrapper script you may still have a
bug for wasting space rather than splitting the package.  Such a bug
is likely to be fairly minor and its existence depends on several
tradeoffs.