* Konstantinos Margaritis (mar...@genesi-usa.com) [101220 23:04]: > a. identify all the circural dependencies in the package tree > (probably something ilke that is already done using some tool) > b. Modify some packages to actually separate into 2 _source_ packages, > a -core and a -full. The -core could be built with only minimal > functionality and just enable the needed package to build.
I doubt that you get enough buy-in from the maintainers to do that. I suggest a different way: Add a new "bootstrap mode" to the build utilities (as per DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS='bootstrap=yes'), in which a source package can be built even if packages marked as not relevant for the architecture "bootstrap" are not there. Also, not all binary packages of the source package need to be produced, but the packages which are produced need to be technical functional (but might be without documentation, and with an degraded user interface). (Also, these binary packages are marked with Bootstrap: yes, to be able to identify them.) (Basically, that adds Build-Recommends, in addition to Build-Depends.) As an example, take bash: Package: bash Binary: bash, bash-static, bash-builtins, bash-doc, bashdb Build-Depends: autoconf, autotools-dev, patch, bison, libncurses5-dev [!bootstrap], texinfo [!bootstrap], debhelper (>= 5), texi2html [!bootstrap], locales, gettext, sharutils, time, xz-utils Build-Depends-Indep: texlive-latex-base [!bootstrap], ghostscript [!bootstrap] This has the advantage that it doesn't require duplicating source packages, and the changes required to an package are not that difficult usually. > Also, It should be a fix in the policy that NO package should ever be > allowed to have circular dependecies. Without a change in the policy > the problem will never be fixed. That's not possible. There is a minimal set of packages build-depending on themselfs - but we should try to keep that set as minimal as possible. Andi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-arm-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20101220221727.gg2...@mails.so.argh.org
