To summarize and implement the discussion of last week, I propose adding
the following policy statement to fink's packaging documentation (to
be added to the Shared Library Policy section).  Discussion and feedback
are most welcome.

  -- Dave



The BuildDependsOnly field

When libraries are being upgraded over time, it is often necessary to have
two versions of the header files available during a transition period,
with one version used for compiling some things and the other version
used for compiling others.  For this reason, the packages containing
header files must be constructed with some care.  If both foo-dev and
bar-dev contain overlapping headers, then foo-dev should declare
  Conflicts: bar-dev
  Replaces: bar-dev
and similarly bar-dev declares Conflicts/Replaces on foo-dev.

In addition, both packages should declare
  BuildDependsOnly: true
This inhibits others from writing packages which depend on foo-dev or
bar-dev, since any such dependency will prevent the smooth operation of the
Conflicts/Replaces method.

There are some packages containing header files for which it's not
appropriate to declare BuildDependsOnly to be true.  In such cases, the
reason for not making this declaration should be stated in the
DescPackaging field.

As of fink 0.20.5, "fink validate" will issue a warning for any .deb
which contains header files and at least one dylib, and does not declare
BuildDependsOnly to be true.  Such packages *must* explain things in
DescPackaging.  (It is possible that in future versions of fink, this
warning will be expanded to cover the case of a .deb with header files
and a static library as well.)


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