On 2007-11-23 01:39 +0100, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> The description of gcc-3.4-base is:
>
> Description: The GNU Compiler Collection (base package)
> This package contains files common to all languages and libraries
> contained in the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).
>
> and this package doesn't depend on anything. And the contents:
>
> vin:~> dpkg -L gcc-3.4-base
> /.
> /usr
> /usr/share
> /usr/share/doc
> /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.4-base
> /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.4-base/NEWS.Debian.gz
> /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.4-base/TODO.Debian
> /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.4-base/copyright
> /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.4-base/changelog.gz
> /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.4-base/README.Debian.gz
> /usr/share/doc/gcc-3.4-base/changelog.Debian.gz
>
> What's the point of having a package containing only such non-user doc
> and why are there packages (e.g. libg2c0) that depend on this package?
The point is that all packages built from the gcc-x.y source package
have a symlink in /usr/share/doc to gcc-x.y-base, here for gcc-4.2:
,----
| $ cd /usr/share/doc
| $ ls -ld gcc-4.2* g++-4.2* libgcc* libstdc++6*
| lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 4 14:53 g++-4.2 -> gcc-4.2-base
| lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 4 14:53 gcc-4.2 -> gcc-4.2-base
| drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Oct 15 19:27 gcc-4.2-base
| lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 4 14:54 gcc-4.2-doc -> gcc-4.2-base
| lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 4 14:54 gcc-4.2-locales -> gcc-4.2-base
| lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 4 14:53 libgcc1 -> gcc-4.2-base
| lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 4 14:53 libstdc++6 -> gcc-4.2-base
| lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 Sep 4 14:53 libstdc++6-4.2-dev -> gcc-4.2-base
`----
This avoids the need of having the same files (copyright and
changelog.debian.gz are mandatory) in all the packages, thus saving a
few KB of disk space.
Regards,
Sven