On Fri, Nov 09, 2018 at 11:12:29AM +0900, John Crawley wrote:
Can a package depend on a non-existant virtual package?
It can, but this is likely a bug if it happens.
Is x-www-browser due to be added to the official Debian virtual
package list?
I'm advocating for x-www-browser to exist, but haven't done the work
to make it so. Note that the authorative list of virtual package names
in policy is out of date. (I have some other ideas about fixing that
which I want to pick up too)
At the moment www-browser is a virtual package, but not a registered
Debian alternative, while x-www-browser is an alternative but not a
VP. :|
www-browser is an alternative, provided by (at least) lynx.
I suppose a workaround for the LXDE package would be to depend
on/recommend/suggest any of a list of usable X browsers, like:
Suggests: firefox | firefox-esr | chromium ...
The choice of safe possibilities for that list might be quite limited.
Yes, but that is effectively doing the work of defining a virtual
package but in the LXDE dependencies. We might as well do it properly and
in the right place from the start.
BTW if a package ships a .desktop file evoking x-www-browser, is it
not obliged to Depend on (rather than Recommend/Suggest) a package
which provides that alternative? Or would a TryExec field in the
.desktop file be enough to cover it?
Personally I agree that this should be a Depends:. I'm not sure the LXDE
maintainers agree. I think Recommends: would be acceptable *if* LXDE's
behaviour was to not show the button/shortcut if the path it was
pointing at was non-existent (perhaps this is achieved via TryExec=).
But that's not the current behaviour.
--
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⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
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