I think I'll reply to my own post. I brought this up on IRC and was pointed to a better solution.
> The libtiff package (upstream) includes one program, tiffgt, that > requires opengl. The current version of libtiff in debian installs > tiffgt's manual page but does not install tiffgt. (This is bug > 219456.) I have built new libtiff packages that create tiffgt, which > seems like a reasonable program to include. I have two packaging > choices, both of which I have successfully implemented, but I wanted > some opinions on which way was better. > > 1. Just add the necessary libraries to Build-Depends so that tiffgt > gets built. This is the easiest solution, but it has the > disadvantage of having libtiff-tools get a bunch of extra > dependencies (X and opengl libraries) just to support one > program. > > 2. Split libtiff-tools into libtiff-tools and libtiff-opengl, where > the latter contains only tiffgt and its manual page. This is > also really easy, but there's one catch: older versions of > libtiff-tools already include the manual page for tiffgt, which > means libtiff-opengl must conflict with versions of libtiff-tools > that are older than this new version. This means that someone > installing libtiff-opengl without first upgrading libtiff-tools > will have libtiff-tools REMOVED. To work around this, I could > make libtiff-opengl require libtiff-tools >= the minimum version > instead of making it conflict with the old version, but I don't > want to do this because libtiff-opengl doesn't actually depend > upon libtiff-tools. > > So, should I include tiffgt in libtiff-tools and just not worry about > all the new dependencies, or should I deal with this short-lived but > annoying problem of people possibly installing libtiff-opengl without > first upgrading libtiff-tools and losing libtiff-tools as a result? > Most people will have all those libraries on their systems anyway, and > I suspect not many people running systems without X will bother with > libtiff-tools. Use Replaces instead of Conflicts. This will enable the new libtiff-opengl to overwrite and claim ownership of tiffgt.1.gz. Since Replaces will appear without Conflicts, libtiff-tools won't get removed. When it gets upgraded, tiffgt.1.gz will not be removed. Once libtiff-opengl is installed, it will no longer be possible to install an older version of libtiff-tools, but I don't consider that to be important. > Thanks for any advice. You're welcome. Actually, thank doogie on IRC. -- Jay Berkenbilt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.ql.org/q/