Am 17.09.2016 um 12:24 schrieb Josh Triplett: > I can't think of anything this would buy us, other than a few bytes in > the Packages file.
It's a valid question. I guess I need to explain what triggered this email. A couple of days ago I uploaded a new version of gtk-doc-tools (to experimental) which dropped the dependency on gnome-common. This dependency has been added a long time ago and is no longer valid today. gnome-common on the other hand pulls in a bunch of other packages, among them pkg-config. Dropping that gnome-common dependency from gtk-doc-tools made quite a few packages FTBFS, because some relied on pkg-config to be pulled in "somehow". Having to add pkg-config as explicit Build-Depends causes churn in this particular case. Given the ubiquituous use of pkg-config I was wondering if we shouldn't just declare it as available. I'm pretty sure there are many more cases where a package needs pkg-config to build but doesn't declare it in Build-Depends because pkg-config is pulled in via transitive dependencies. If that dependency chain is broken at some point this would cause build failures. Michael -- Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth?
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