On 08/12/16 16:59, Adam D. Barratt wrote: > On 2016-12-08 13:08, Andreas Henriksson wrote: >> On Thu, Dec 08, 2016 at 01:41:38PM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote: >>> >>> >>> On 08/12/16 13:35, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote: >>> > On Thu, Dec 08, 2016 at 01:02:20PM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote: >> [...] >>> >>> I don't think that clearly addresses the case of alternative >>> dependencies. > > It does when one of the alternatives doesn't exist in the archive. > >>> My packages do not "require" nagios3, although they will work with it >>> if the user doesn't have Icinga. >>> >>> Maybe that clause could be extended to state that packages (may|may >>> not) include alternative dependencies that are not in main, as long as >>> at least one of the alternatives is in main. >> >> Not sure what Andrey is supposed to be quoting here, but see >> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=681419#275 >> (Conclusion/ruling at the bottom of that post.) > > Andrey was quoting the section of policy that the TC ruling you mention > applies to. > > Specifically there's no practical difference between > "package-in-non-free | package-in-main" and "package-removed-from-debian > | package-in-main" so far as acceptable dependencies for packages in > main are concerned. >
Reading that entire resolution, it concludes: 6. The Technical Committee resolves that alternative dependencies of the form "Depends: package-in-main | package-in-non-free" are permissible in main, and do not constitute a violation of the policy clause cited in point 1. 7. We nevertheless recommend that packages in main consider carefully whether this might cause the inadvertent installation of non-free packages due to conflicts, especially those with usage restrictions. so I think that is suggesting my packages (ganglia-nagios-bridge and syslog-nagios-bridge) can potentially continue to include nagios3 as a permitted dependency as long as they also have at least one alternative dependency (icinga) that is in main. Despite the names of my packages, I'm not encouraging people to install Nagios and I'm completely happy for people to run them with Icinga or whatever else they want to try, but I don't want to force them to ditch nagios3 if they are willing to keep it. Regards, Daniel
