On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 01:12:37PM +0200, Gerfried Fuchs wrote: > Hi! > > Policy is clear on packages in main aren't allowed to depend on > packages outside of main. Now in a fair amount of cases this has been > worked around by having the package outside of main as alternative > dependency and a package in main offer basic functionality for the > package to still be able to work. > > I know that the buildd system likes to pull in the first package in > such an alternative dependency chain. And now I start to wonder: > > Is it allowed for a package in main to have a package _outside_ of main > as first component of an alternative dependency? The package in > question is extremely unlikely to ever be used as Build-Depends, so this > is of a more general question. > > What also might be used as argument is the social contract, DFSG #4: > "Our priorities are our users and free software" -- it can be argued > that we don't put the priority on free software in such a case. > > tl;dr - what do you think, is a "Depends: foo-contrib | foo" acceptable > for packages in main or should it be "Depends: foo | foo-contrib" > instead?
Policy 2.2.1 forbid both usages: it says: the package must not declare a "Depends", "Recommends", or "Build-Depends" relationship on a non-_main_ package Nowhere in policy there is an indication that the first alternative is special. I suggest that foo-contrib Provides: foo instead. Cheers, -- Bill. <ballo...@debian.org> Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110922202506.GB15478@yellowpig