Re: Recursive Dependency Disease reminder and freetype status

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Nathanael Nerode <neroden@fastmail.fm> wrote in debian-devel:

> I just finished updating the page http://wiki.debian.org/FreetypeTransition .
>
> If your package is listed there, it has a bug: either a missing build-dependency,
> or recursive dependency disease.  We've made a lot of progress, but there are still
> nearly 200 packages with unneeded and damaging dependencies on libfreetype6.
>
[...]
> If you haven't checked your packages for bogus dependencies, please do
> so.  (Most of the time, a dependency on libfoo without a build-dependency on libfoo-dev
> indicates either recursive dependency disease or a missing build-dependency.  There
> are rare exceptions; but if you've got *lots* of dependencies like this, you
> *definitely* have recursive dependency disease.)  

tetex-bin is on the list; it Depends on libfreetype6, but has no
build-dependency.  Other symptoms for our recursive dependency disease
are libfontconfig1 and maybe libice6, libsm6.

The cure is said to be relibtoolizing.  I remember that I already tried
that for a different purpose and miserably failed.  TeXlive, however,
doesn't seem to have this problem.  So maybe there's hope.  On the other
hand, the "disease" is not an acute danger for any library transition,
it's more a hypothetical problem.  

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)