On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 22:12 -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: > Any package that wants to use .pc files during its build is going to invoke > pkg-config directly, and changing your -dev package to recommend a different > means of linking to the library won't cause this reference to disappear. > That's a build-dependency.
It's also a lot of packages - does such a dependency ever become inferred by other packages? It probably shouldn't, for your reasons above, so this would appear to be a case for a lintian check. If ./configure exists and calls pkg-config or configure.in|ac calls pkg-config or uses an m4 macro that calls pkg-config, the package should build-depend on pkg-config ? (We don't seem to have many lintian checks on Build-Depends.) I think the -dev package should not depend on pkg-config - whichever packages choose to use pkg-config to retrieve the data in the .pc file needs to depend on pkg-config. The -dev package doesn't call pkg-config. IMHO, the package providing the .pc file has no need to force any dependency on packages using the -dev. It is perfectly possible to avoid pkg-config but if you are linking against several -dev packages which all provide .pc files, it is inevitable that the package will be better off with pkg-config. This, in many ways, is no different to a build-depends on debhelper or dpatch. The package is using an existing tool as a direct component of the build in situations where another method might be possible (hardcoding the --libs and --cflags output) but not usually desirable. Yes, packages do build without debhelper but it is certainly easier (and desirable for most packages to avoid repeating the same bugs) to use debhelper. Similarly with pkg-config - you can build packages without it but it does make life easier and it does solve some problems inherent in other methods. (It brings in one or two problems of its own too.) (In terms of cross-building / debian-xcontrol, Simon, it's a Build-Depends-Tool.) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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