On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 10:55:18PM -0500, Daniel Burrows wrote: > As I'm sure everyone knows, pure virtual entries in a Depends line are > strongly deprecated, due to the fact that frontends have a tendency to pick > a random provider of the package. What I'm not sure is if this is just "ugly" > or actually considered a bug. In particular, I can't remember and would like > to know: > > (a) Is a pure virtual entry with no prior alternative in a Depends line an > actual bug? i.e., do we have a consensus on this? > > (b) If the answer to (a) is "yes", is a pure virtual *Recommendation* a bug? > > Rationale: Recommendations are intended to be installed by default, so > their fields should be just as friendly to automatic tools as Depends > is.
I don't think a pure virtual dependency (or recommendation) should be a bug. If there is really no reason to choose one provider or another, why choose one artificially? I expect a tool like aptitude might pick the candidate with highest priority, or else one at random (or the first one in some sort order). A package maintainer could pick one this way too, but then it's one more thing to maintain. Steinar mentioned problems with pure virtual build-deps. Those should work too. In the past bugs have been filed about those, but I think those are a problem because of bugs in the auto-build tools, rather than being an intrinsic problems with the deps. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
