>>"Anthony" == Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
Anthony> On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 03:31:18PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> >>"Anthony" == Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
>> > You need to take this in context though. If they're running in X, then
>> > it'll work fine, because xlibs will already have been installed. If
>> > they're not running in X, one'll get a linker failure, the other will
>> > get a "DISPLAY not set" failure.
>> > "Hey why doesn't cardinfo work?"
>> > "It's an X program and you don't have X installed."
>> > Doesn't seem particularly hard? (Seems a lot easier than
>> > explaining it to the cognoscenti tbh... :)
>> ;-)
>> In this particular case, you got me. In the general case,
>> though, I still think my arguments have merit.
> Right, but that's kind-of the point: in the general case this isn't an
> issue, since everyone recognises it's a bad thing to do and there're
> very few cases where fixing it would actually be worse.
A clarification: On reflection, I think you got me on that
example, not on my general arguments. Having a program fail with a
linkage error is certainly a bug.
Another interesting case is bsdmainutils: it contains
calendar, and suggests cpp, but calendar does not work unless cpp is
installed.
Do people think that is OK? I have heard this discussion
already being cited as a reason that shipping a borken calendar is
OK, and not a bug, and not a Bad Thing.
Frankly, I think that shipping binaries that are broken unless
optional dependencies are installed makes us look slovenly and
unprofessional.
> I'd be rather concerned if the technical committee (or debian-policy,
> where I've argued similar things), took good general principles and
> turned them into unbreakable rules.
The contrary point is when the tech ctte makes are
recommendation which does not accommodate future cases, or does not
recognize the narrowness of the decision.
manoj
--
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." Howard Aiken
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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