Re: Should -dev packages providing .pc files depend on pkg-config?

[Gabor Gombas <gombasg@sztaki.hu>]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 12:02:20PM +0200, Bas Wijnen wrote:

> How is this different with _any_ dependency on the system?  Do you
> suggest that iceweasel should drop its libgtk dependency, because users
> might want to use their own compiled version of it?

iceweasel _uses_ libgtk. A -dev package that ships a .pc file does _not_
use pkg-config - it just provides a data file that pkg-config (or some
other similar tool) can use. If you want an analogy, think about -data
packages:

$ apt-cache show console-data | grep ^Depends:
Depends: debconf | debconf-2.0, debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0

Notice it does not depend on console-tools or kbd, even though you need
one of them to make use of the data. The same thing holds for .pc files
- they are just data files that some other tool can process.

Gabor

[Of course, as has been already mentioned in this thread, if the -dev
package also ships a script that calls pkg-config, then it should depend
on pkg-config, but for a different reason.]

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     MTA SZTAKI Computer and Automation Research Institute
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