On Thu, Sep 18, 2003 at 09:11:19PM -0500, Craig P. Steffen wrote: > I am prospective DD; as one of my opening packages, I intend to adopt the > sound file editor xwave. One of the bugs against it, 170005, says that > depending on the virtual package "libxaw-dev" is wrong. > > However, reading the debian policy manual sections 3.6 and 7.4, it seems to > me to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The real packages libxaw6-dev > and libxaw7-dev exist, and are listed as Providing libxaw-dev. The only > other thing that the policy manuals suggest is that virtual packages be > mentioned in the virtual-packages-name-list.txt.
The problem is that you must not Depend on a virtual package unless you provide a real package as an alternative before the real one. Depends; libxaw7-dev | libxaw-dev is OK. See policy 7.4 The rationale were given by Matthias (Letting apt-get perform without human intervention like on autobuilders). That libxaw-dev is not official is irrelevant to #170005. This is a generally agreed upon practice for a library to provide the virtual package libxxx-dev. Such virtual packages don't need to be make official. See Junichi library packaging guide. Cheers, -- Bill. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Imagine a large red swirl here.
