> IMHO, we will have to name specific packages. However, unlike Roman, > I hesitate to provide a huge default set. "make" of course sounds > reasonable, "dpkg-dev" anyway, but "texinfo" not. texinfo *was* in > the tetex packages, and I had some trouble to compile some packages > on the Hurd before I had tex :) [I used texinfo from the GNU source > though, which worked fine]
I believe everybody understood this wrong :-) I Just wanted to show an **EXAMPLE**, namely what the central system currently considers build-essential. I (hope that I) showed that the differences where only stuff introduced for my convenience: perl, texinfo, and debhelper/debmake. I've made those essential only to avoid cluttering up the manual dependencies. To repeat: I did not propose to add them to the list we may or may not write into policy... > > In my opinion, we should ban dependencies on source packages in the Policy > > (although I'm not proposing that yet). > > Yes, this is something to consider. Yes!! If a build uses something outside its own source tree, this seems somewhat broken. The stuff that's needed should go into -dev packages. The new tcl8.0-dev shows that this is doable. BTW, FYI: currently those packages depend on source trees: blt8.0-unoff => *TCL80-SOURCE, *TK80-SOURCE blt8.0 => *TCL80-SOURCE, *TK80-SOURCE expect => *TCL80-SOURCE gs => *LIBJPEG-SOURCE gs-aladdin => *LIBJPEG-SOURCE roxen => *PIKE-SOURCE tclx => *TCL76-SOURCE, *TK42-SOURCE tk4.2 => *TCL76-SOURCE tkstep8.0 => *TCL80-SOURCE, *TK80-SOURCE tnt => *AX25UTIL-SOURCE The Tcl/Tk source tree deps can be removed by properly using the new data tcl8.0-dev provides. gs and gs-alladin maybe could include the needed libjpeg code. And ax25-utils should export its stuff into a -dev package. > "Indirect dependencies are evil, don't depend on them. If you do, we > wil come and hurt you." :) > > I think we don't need to add this to the proposal. Roman just wanted > to make us aware of something that follows directly from the word > Dependency in the abstract sense (IMO). It maybe follows directly for you, but if you don't stress it explicitly, many people will forget this consequence... :-) Roman
