> Why change?
>
> Would it be OK for the source of mount to depend on ssh? (just a realy
> extreme example)
No: ssh is not in main (it's in non-US/non-free at present, although
it may well end up in non-US/main very soon). See policy 2.1.2 for
the definition of the `main' section.
> Source packages should also not depend on other packages with higher
> priority, otherwise there could arise a situation where you can?t
> build a package because you can?t build another.
No, I disagree. We've discussed this before. Many of the standard
(even Essential) programs need development programs (auto*, gcc,
debhelper, -dev packages etc.) in order to compile them.
However, once we've got a full set of source dependencies we will be
able to pinpoint such circular cases, though in practice they're
probably mainly significant for porters only.
> Actually checking that all sources can be build is a fulltime
> job. There may not be any loops in the dependencies of sources (except
> for essential and required).
Why not? There's a well-known procedure called bootstrapping....
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
