Thanks Samuel and Russ for the feedback! On Mon, 19 Aug 2024 at 20:52, Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> wrote: > > Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer <perezme...@gmail.com> writes: > > > So, what about if we could have [meta] packages that can be installed by > > the user but not used as Build-Depends entries? Please note that for the > > moment I'm targeting more at the idea itself rather than at the > > implementation (but I'll certainly love to know if you have an idea on > > how could this be implemented). > > > At one point I thought of adding a Lintian test checking for this kind > > of usage, but first and foremost I would like to know if you think this > > is a viable/acceptable idea, maybe even adding a special section in our > > policy. > > I could have sworn that we already had tags like that in Lintian. > Certainly, this is a concept that has already existed in Debian for some > time. There have always been metapackages or other similar cases that are > only intended for end users and would make no sense as build dependencies, > such as all of the task-* packages. > > Lintian feels like the right place to put a test like this. If there are > dependencies like that which could potentially cause serious issues, those > could even be an auto-reject tag. > > I'm not sure that Policy would have much to say about this unless we need > some mechanism for labeling such packages other than a MR to Lintian. The > important information is the list of packages that shouldn't be used this > way, and the hard part is probably gathering that list.
Thanks, I'll try to research this idea then! -- Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer https://perezmeyer.com.ar/
