[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#448498: please provide a virtual package for octave-headers

[Rafael Laboissiere]

* Rafael Laboissiere <rafael at debian.org> [2007-12-21 14:23]:

> * Thomas Weber <thomas.weber.mail at gmail.com> [2007-12-21 11:41]:
> 
> > 
> > Am Montag, den 29.10.2007, 15:04 +0100 schrieb Soeren Sonnenburg:
> > > Package: octave3.0
> > > Version: 2.9.15-1
> > > Severity: wishlist
> > > 
> > > it would be nice to have a package octave-headers that pulls in
> > > octave2.9-headers (or the most current version corresponding to the
> > >         octave package)
> > 
> > This went undiscussed. Opinions?
> 
> This is a god idea and should not be too complicated to implement.

I sort of changed my mind about this issue.  Empty packages are usually
created for easing transitions from one distribution to the other.  I think
that empty packages should not be perpetuated.  We already dropped the empty
octave package and I think we should not create a new octave-headers
package.

Note that octave-header is already a virtual package provided by all
versions Octave:

    $ apt-cache showpkg octave-headers
    [...]
    Reverse Provides:
    octave3.0-headers 3.0.0-1
    octave2.9-headers 1:2.9.19-2
    octave2.1-headers 1:2.1.73-16

Maintainers should make their packages depend on octave-headers only when
the said packages do not depend on a specific version of Octave.  To make
one version the default, maintainers should write (cf Policy 7.4):

    Depends: octave3.0-headers | octave-headers

Users installing the development package should know what they are doing,
not blindly doing "apt-get install octave-headers".

Opinions?

-- 
Rafael