Dear dpkg maintainers,
Let me present to you a situation caused by the change to dpkg-dev to
install Build-Depends in alphabetical order:
1) atlas3-base-dev package provides an alternative version of
liblapack.so and libblas.so to the packages refblas3-dev and lapack3-dev
2) Maintainer of those packages (Camm Maguire, in CC) has the runtime
library package lapack3 Depend on "atlas3-base | refblas3 | libblas.so.3"
3) Up till now, it's been possible for a package (for instance, my
package Cernlib) that build-depends on these -dev packages to make sure
the runtime library package "atlas3-base" doesn't get installed, by use
of "Build-Depends: refblas3-dev, lapack3-dev". The rationale at the
time was just that atlas3-base{,-dev} are larger, so take longer to
download and unpack, causing more wear and tear on buildds.
4) Now that dpkg re-orders Build-Depends, atlas3-base always ends up
installed since lapack3-dev comes alphabetically before refblas3-dev.
5) Until recently this was just an annoyance. But now that we are going
through the gfortran -> g77 transition, lapack3 and refblas3 (runtime
libs) have been renamed to lapack3gf and refblas3gf. ATLAS has not yet
transitioned, so there is not yet an atlas3gf-base package existing.
But (in anticipation of it) lapack3gf already Depends on "atlas3gf-base
| refblas3gf | libblas.so.3gf".
6) As a result, the version of Cernlib I just uploaded to experimental
for the purpose of furthering the gfortran transition FTBFSes on all
arches due to unsatisfied dependencies:
http://experimental.debian.net/build.php?pkg=cernlib
7) If dpkg was reverted not to re-order Build-Depends, I could force
refblas3gf to be installed first, satisfying the dependency of lapack3gf
on "atlas3gf-base | refblas3gf | libblas.so.3gf" and preventing the
attempted installation of non-existent atlas3gf-base.
8) If dpkg is not reverted, I fear that the progress of the gfortran
transition will come to a halt until ATLAS can be made to transition
(which due to technical difficulties could possibly be a long time in
coming).
So please reconsider the closing of this bug.
best regards,
--
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@gmail.com>
WWW: http://www.starplot.org/
WWW: http://people.debian.org/~kmccarty/
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