On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 03:35:42PM +0200, Arjan Oosting wrote: > Op ma, 27-06-2005 te 10:56 +0100, schreef Neil McGovern: > > Hi there, you appear to be depending on build-essential without using a > > versioned depends.
> > In general a package should not depend on build essential packages but
> > if it must do so, the depends should have a version string.
> I agree it isn't necessary, which is stated in policy section 4.2 but
> section 4 and section 7 do not contain any statement saying that every
> build dependency on build-essential should be versioned.
4.2. Package relationships
[...]
When specifying the set of build-time dependencies, one should list
only those packages explicitly required by the build. It is not
necessary to list packages which are required merely because some
other package in the list of build-time dependencies depends on
them.[2]
This is a policy *should*, so violating this is an important bug.
> As it is nowhere forbidden in the policy and I use CDBS to generate
> debian/control from debian/control.in (not a build-time though) and CDBS
> adds the reference to build-essential in the Build-Depends, I am
> inclined to leave build-essential in the Build-Depends list.
No, CDBS should not be doing this. The one previous case I was aware of
where this happened, I was told that the package was making buggy use of
CDBS internal variables.
> If it really should not be done, maybe a check could be added to lintian
> and/or linda and CDBS and the policy should be updated.
There *is* a lintian check for this, and there is no need for policy to be
updated -- just for you to follow it.
--
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
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