Bug#606221: Downgrade gcc dependency to recommends - Or: What's the gcc dependency for?

[Daniel Leidert]

Am Dienstag, den 07.12.2010, 17:31 +0100 schrieb Loïc Minier:
> On Tue, Dec 07, 2010, Daniel Leidert wrote:
> > pbuilder depends on gcc, so it pulls in a compiler on a system, where I don't
> > want to have a compiler for everybody. But why does it depend on gcc? There
> > is no gcc dependency for (c)debootstrap like stated in the changelog entry for
> > 0.10. Further the gcc dependency had been removed in version 0.187. There is
> > no information about why it has been re-added nor when? Can this dependency
> > please be dropped (fortunately already for squeeze) or downgraded?
> 
>  This might be for dpkg-dev/dpkg-source which guesses the host system by
>  looking at gcc -dumpmachine; see /usr/share/perl5/Dpkg/Arch.pm

Well, dpkg-dev recommends gcc, but pbuilder does not even depend on
dpkg-dev. It recommends devscripts, which then depends on dpkg-dev. But
if using --use-pdebuild-internal then the existence of these packages is
IMO not required. I can't see a reason for this dependency and the
changelog doesn't tell, why it had been re-added. IMO it is safe to
downgrade this dependency to a recommendation (like dpkg-dev does) or
drop it completely for pbuilder.

Regards, Daniel