If a packaged program contains a Suggests:ed feature that is linked at runtime when a user does something special, perhaps via dlopen(3), then the program may appear to fail mysteriously if the library the feature depends on has different calling conventions or symbols from the one the program was built and tested against.
Would it make sense for these cases to be covered by extra debian packages, perhaps with a -feature suffix to the name, which contain concrete dependencies? That way the admin will be able to assure his users that an upgrade won't break things. Case in point: mutt's IMAPS capability depends on a specific version of libgnutls5 being present, or it complains about a missing symbol and hides your mail from you when you try to access a mailbox starting with "imaps://". Regards, -- Andrew Chadwick <Secure beneath the watchful eyes>
pgpquDqeDU20I.pgp
Description: PGP signature