Re: Virtual packages

[Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

Andres Suffield wrote:

> That makes sense (variation on #4). How about this text? (I'll
> formalise it as a proposal/diff when people have had a chance to
> comment)
>
> When a new virtual package is needed, the maintainers involved should
> decide between themselves on what names should be used, and a
> definition of what requirements should be placed on a package that
> provides the relevant name. When this has been decided, the new names
> and descriptions should be submitted to policy (by way of a wishlist
> bug filed against debian-policy) for inclusion in the list of virtual
> packages.

I have a (minor) comment:

There is etablished practice, for a libxxxX-dev package to 
Provides: the virtual package libxxx-dev. For example libreadline4-dev
Provides: libreadline-dev.  

This make sense, since we generally support only one libxxxX-dev at a time,
so this allow to 'apt-get install libxxx-dev' without caring what is the 
current X value.

I think your wording do not take into account this kind of virtual packages.
Also I am not sure if they are in the scope of the policy.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

There is no record of the ballombe@debian.org package, and no bugs have been
filed against it.