Hi! Policy is clear on packages in main aren't allowed to depend on packages outside of main. Now in a fair amount of cases this has been worked around by having the package outside of main as alternative dependency and a package in main offer basic functionality for the package to still be able to work.
I know that the buildd system likes to pull in the first package in such an alternative dependency chain. And now I start to wonder: Is it allowed for a package in main to have a package _outside_ of main as first component of an alternative dependency? The package in question is extremely unlikely to ever be used as Build-Depends, so this is of a more general question. What also might be used as argument is the social contract, DFSG #4: "Our priorities are our users and free software" -- it can be argued that we don't put the priority on free software in such a case. tl;dr - what do you think, is a "Depends: foo-contrib | foo" acceptable for packages in main or should it be "Depends: foo | foo-contrib" instead? Thanks for answering to the short strawpoll, Rhonda -- Fühlst du dich mutlos, fass endlich Mut, los | Fühlst du dich hilflos, geh raus und hilf, los | Wir sind Helden Fühlst du dich machtlos, geh raus und mach, los | 23.55: Alles auf Anfang Fühlst du dich haltlos, such Halt und lass los | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110920111237.ga24...@anguilla.debian.or.at