On 17-02-13 21:13, Graham Inggs wrote:
> but libmrm4
> and libuil4 both depend on libxm4,
I had completely missed that. You are right, they do. But this can not
be seen from the control file, it is added by ${misc:Depends},
${shlibs:Depends}.
> which depends on libmotif-common and
> libxm4 recommends the others (for new installations), so it's a fairly
> safe bet that if you have libxm4 you'll have everything that provides
> libmotif3 and libmotif4.
> It's not perfect, but I do not know of a better solution.
I finally see what you were hinting at. The missing piece was above. But
indeed, because you can not guarantee that all three will be installed
if somebody installs a package that requires libmotif3/libmotif4, I
don't think this is the right solution. Providing a virtual package
(lets not call it transitional then) is I think better.
> An other option is to ALSO provide a virtual libmotif3 package (very
> similar to libmotif4).
>
> I thought of this, but libmotif3 was dropped from Debian around 2010, so
> I think by now everyone has found another solution; i.e. make their own
> symlinks, or if they are Ubuntu users, upgrade to Precise.
If this is true, why do you care about providing libmotif3 at all? Just
asking.
>> To be perfectly clear, I think ONLY libmotif4 could ever provide
>> libmotif3. The alternative is a libmotif3 package. This is independent
>> of our final choice of multi-arch for each package.
>
> I disagree, what about new installations? Surely somebody who types
> 'sudo apt-get install libxm4' will have end up with all the requirements
> to install packages that depend on libmotif3 and libmotif4?
No. If he/she absolutely needs libmrm4 or libuil4 to run his/her foo-bin
package, he should get it no matter what. So libmotif3/libmotif4 should
absolutely pull that in or fail. Therefore, a virtual libmotif4 package
that provides libmotif3. I propose we remove the sentence "...can safely
be removed..." This problem will go away soon, as packages will depend
on the proper library directly in the future.
> One sure way to solve this is to make libxm4 depend on libmrm4 and
> libuil4, but I don't like circular dependencies.
No, me neither.
Paul
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