IOhannes m zmölnig:
[...]While I like the idea in general, I wonder how I could override these automatic additions. I think there are some packages that even demote `${shlibs:Depends}` to Recommends. mfh.her.fsr IOhannes
I had the same conceptual concern when I originally thought about this proposal. However, first off, I am not aware of wide-spread usage of people demoting entire substvars.
If it was to happen, I suspect that ${shlibs:Depends} would not be the best argument. First off, dpkg-shlibdeps has infrastructure to selectively demote scanned elf binaries to a different substvar. Secondly, I struggle to think of a real world case, where demoting ${shlibs:Depends} would matter a lot. That is, a case where the right answer is not just splitting these binaries into a separate package if they are that consuming in dependencies.
Additionally, Colin replied with the solution of "tweaking" the substvars file. I was aware of that solution, but I did not want to promote it as a general solution, so I omitted it from my ideal email.
If we find ourselves regularly "correcting" substvars in every package, then I think we owe ourselves to consider if we have a bug that needs fixing. Not sure we are there yet given a single example (the one in Colin's email). However, I be interested to know how frequent this pattern is and whether we therefore should look at fixing this at a different layer.
Best regards, Niels
