[Plplot-devel] Package dependencies [was: Re: PLplot statistics]

[Rafael L. <lab...@mp...>]

* Alan W. Irwin <ir...@be...> [2002-02-08 10:23]:

> At some point I intend to get involved in (unofficial) Debian packaging
> myself for the yplot project.  Out of curiosity, do you have to remember all
> the dependencies yourself or do you have an automatic system (as in rpm)
> that usually gets the dependices right for whatever package you have
> assembled?

For tracking shared library dependencies, the Debian packaging tool
(debuild, or dpkg-buildpackage) has a simple mechanism that is triggered by
the following line in debian/control:

    Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}

The "${shlibs:Depends}" string is automatically substituted.  For instance,
in the case of plplot-tcl, it becomes:

    libc6 (>= 2.1.2), tcl8.2 (>= 8.2.2), tk8.2 (>= 8.2.2), xlib6g (>= 3.3.6-4)

Of course, other kind of dependencies (not shared libs) have to be included
by hand.  For instance, plplot-tcl depends on itk3.1, iwidgets3.1, and
itcl3.1.  Currently, this cannot be detected automatically.  However, it
could be, since there is already a mechanism for Perl, using the token
"${perl:Depends}" in debian/control, that checks all module dependencies.
This could easily be extended to Tcl, by parsing the "package require"
instances in Tcl source files.  However, I think that there is few interest
on this mechanism among Debian developers and it is not going to be
implemented.

> BTW, this has been an enjoyable thread which I have helped others to move
> far off topic, 

Right, but I changed the Subject now.

-- 
Rafael