[php-maint] Bug#619036: Bug#619036: php5: Build-Depends uninstallable

[Stefan Fritsch]

On Monday 21 March 2011, Peter Samuelson wrote:
> Since only a single libdb*-dev can be installed at a time, and
> since libaprutil1-dev Depends on one of them, any apr-util reverse
> dep is forced to use the same bdb version.  Even though, in
> Subversion's case, we don't use the apr-util frontend to libdb* at
> all.
> 
> My preferred solution is to decouple apr-util and libdb, by not
> having the Depends in libaprutil1-dev.  I note that (at least for
> Subversion) this should not pose any problems at runtime: libdb
> uses symbol versioning, and libsvn1 picks up the correct Depends:
> libdb4.8 via dpkg-shlibdeps.
> 
> The only reason I can see for libaprutil1-dev to depend on
> libdb*-dev is /usr/include/apr-1.0/apu_want.h, a feature where an
> application can request an include of db.h.  I wonder if any of
> its reverse deps are actually using this very minor
> feature.  Subversion can optionally find the right db.h that way,
> but we don't use it in Debian.
> 
> Anyway, I wonder if any other reverse deps of apr-util would break
> if it stopped depending on libdb*-dev.  Even if so, adding some
> "Build-Depends: libdb4.8-dev" or similar to a few packages seems
> reasonable to me.

Some googling hasn't revealed any user of apu_want.h outside of apr-
util itself. I agree that removing the dependency looks like the best 
idea.

> To answer your original question, I have not tested Subversion with
> libdb 5.1.  I will try to remember to do that soon.  There are
> upstream indications that it is compatible.

As subversion itself has a build-dep on libdb4.8-dev, it should be 
possible to remove libaprutil1-dev's dep without breaking subversion.
I will do that with the next upload.