Re: Feaping Creature-ism in core Debian Packages

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Richard Braakman wrote:

> Dale Scheetz wrote:
> > [...] By this long indirect route,
> > glibc becomes dependent for its construction upon an optional package.
> > This chain elevates debhelper to the defacto level of standard...and there
> > is no reason for it to do so. (see later rant)
> 
> No, such priority chains only apply to binary dependencies.  For source

Because we only have rules for binary dependencies.

> dependencies, all that counts is that packages in main can be built with
> packages in main.

So, to build a critical core package, it is ok to require that every other
package in main be installed before it can be built? (I know that is an
exageration, but I hope you get my point)

> 
> I don't think we should worry about bootstrapping issues until we
> have source dependencies in place.

Well, we don't have source dependencies and we _do_ have bootstrapping
issues to deal with, so I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

While I have stated this in terms of "bootstrapping", it really has to do
with building the distribution as a completely integrated set of packages.
Every program used to build glibc, should, after the first compile of
glibc, be built again with the new glibc and then these newly built tools
should be used to build glibc again. This library "syncing" issue has
caused us problems in the past because of library drift. The simplest way
to resolve it is to control what libraries the rest of the system is being
built against, thus my care in determining source build dependencies for
these "core" libraries.

> 
> As for byacc, it's "extra" because it performs the same task as bison,
> which is "standard".
> 
And flex prefers byacc, and xfree86 prefers bison, so extra is pretty
stupid (but then I have always thought that the logic of extra was pretty
idiotic)
I know that we separate duplicate products in this fashion, but we seem to
have no control as to which is used by which package during build, thus
requiring both be present. (actually flex may build ok with bison
installed. I haven't tried it, as byacc satisfies the configure
dependency.)

So, how do I build only xlib6g from the xfree86 source, without having to
build the whole package?

Luck,

Dwarf
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