Bug#528453: debian policy: please discourage overly strict run-time version checks

[Jonathan Nieder]

reassign 528453 debian-policy 3.9.1.0
severity 528453 wishlist
retitle 528453 debian policy: please discourage overly strict run-time version checks
tags 528453 - wontfix
quit

Hi,

Jörg Sommer wrote:
> Jonathan Nieder hat am Fri 01. Jan, 10:42 (+0000) geschrieben:
>> Jörg Sommer wrote:

>>> This report didn't really describe a bug. It's more a (loosely) feature
>>> of Jed to check if the version used at runtime is at least as recent as
>>> the version used while building. As said before, this warning comes up
>>> everytime jed migrates faster to testing than libslang and vanishes when
>>> libslang migrated.
>>>
>>> We don't want to add a dependency to jed on the libslang version used at
>>> buildtime, because this would drive the dynamic dependency system of
>>> Debian useless—Debian's symbol bases dependency system is much more
>>> accurate than jed's loosely feature.
>>
>> Why not suppress the warning?
>
> Because upstream decided the warning should be there and we do not want
> to add a new patch for this.

Debian policy does not explain that packages should not do this, but I
think that's a bug in policy.

This reminds me of a few bugs I've seen before: one in subversion (an
overly strict run-time check for APR version) and one in various apps
that use the tcl runtime (likewise).  Reassigning.  (Thoughts welcome,
as always.)