Hi Uwe,
On 2012-09-20 11:04, Uwe Kleine-König wrote:
On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 12:16:14AM -0400, Filipus Klutiero wrote:
reopen 682726
thanks
On 2012-09-19 01:48, Ben Hutchings wrote:
On Tue, 2012-09-18 at 20:10 -0400, Filipus Klutiero wrote:
On 2012-09-18 14:30, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
This is an automatic notification regarding your Bug report
which was filed against the linux-source-3.4 package:
#682726: [linux-source-3.4] make xconfig: "Unable to find the QT4 tool qmake."
It has been closed by Ben Hutchings<[email protected]>.
Their explanation is attached below along with your original report.
If this explanation is unsatisfactory and you have not received a
better one in a separate message then please contact Ben
Hutchings<[email protected]> by
replying to this email.
I understand that suggesting pkg-config might reduce the prevalence of
this bug, but how would that solve it?
There is no solution to the problem of 'optional dependencies'; this is
the best you're going to get.
Ben.
If by 'optional dependencies' you mean assuming a feature provided
by a package on which the dependency is not declared as absolute,
there are certainly solutions; declare the dependency as absolute or
stop assuming the feature's presence.
It's not a hard dependency because you can use the package in question
in a sensible way without pkg-config. (E.g. by sticking to nconfig) So
adding a dependency isn't right.
Debian-Policy says:
The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is required
for the depending package to provide a significant amount of
functionality.
[...] [Suggests] is used to declare that one package may be more
useful with one or more others. Using this field tells the
packaging system and the user that the listed packages are
related to this one and can perhaps enhance its usefulness, but
that installing this one without them is perfectly reasonable.
So it seems the decision depends on qconfig being "significant" or not.
I understand your reasoning, but if we read policy carefully, we notice
that while is says Depends should be used in certain cases, it does not
say that this list is exhaustive. In other words, it says Depends should
be used in certain cases, but it does not say Depends should be used in
and only in these cases.
IMHO Suggests is fine.
The package currently assumes that pkg-config is installed. The packages
assumed by linux-source must be listed in its Depends. But, I agree
linux-source can be useful without pkg-config, and a suggestion should
be fine if we can eliminate all assumptions of pkg-config.
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