Michael Biebl wrote: > I wonder if nowadays pkg-config would qualify as Build-Essential. > > We have 2400 source packages listing it as explicit Build-Depends and > countless -dev packages pulling in pkg-config. So the list of packages > requiring pkg-config during build is potentially much longer. > > At which point do we consider a package Build-Essential? > It's not like every package actually uses gcc or make during build either. > > Aside from the sheer number of packages requiring pkg-config, adding it > to build-essential would be an endorsement of pkg-config as the one > right tool to detect dependencies during configure.
I don't think we should add any more packages to build-essential. If anything, I'd like to see both Essential and build-essential decrease in favor of explicit dependencies, which makes it easier to replace components. I don't think "many packages list it" justifies adding to build-essential. We don't need the minimal size reduction in the Packages file, and I don't think this would remove logical complexity, since you still have to know that build-essential has it. I can't think of anything this would buy us, other than a few bytes in the Packages file.
