Re: Dummy packages for feature dependencies

[Josselin Mouette]

Le jeu 28/11/2002 à 16:11, Andrew Chadwick a écrit :

> 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://".

I have encountered this kind of problem with hdf5, which changes its ABI
at every single binary version. You can solve this using a virtual
package, say let libgnutls5 Provides: libgnutls-$version and mutt depend
on that virtual package. Problem is, you need to rebuild all packages
depending on such virtual packages at each upstream version bump, but
there is not much choice.

-- 
 .''`.   Josselin Mouette/\./\
: :' :   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
`. `'[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Dummy packages for feature dependencies

[Andrew Chadwick]

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



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