[Pkg-crosswire-devel] Thoughts on sword-frontend and packaging sword modules

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs]

2009/8/17 Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden at fastmail.fm>:
> Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:
>
>> * Is there a need for virtual package "sword-frontend"?
>>
>> Sword library package suggest to install sword-frontend. Previously
>> sword-frontend was provided by bibledit, ...
>
> Surely not?  Bibledit is not a SWORD frontend.  Bibletime, maybe?
>

Yeah you are right Bibletime (I keep mixing them up I don't use either of them).

>> Can I go ahead and kill virtual sword-frontend cause I don't quite see
>> use for it?
>
> If we ever start doing .deb packaged SWORD modules, those modules would
> presumably benefit from a "Suggests:" or "Recommends:" of a sword frontend,
> so that when you install a packaged SWORD module, you have a way to figure
> out what program you need to use it.
>

Yeap, only if you are installing "sword-frontend" directly from
command line. It will list you packages and will tell you that you
have to choose one. But if you are installing libsword or for example
sword-text-kjv it will pull in the first alphanumeric package which
will always be bibletime.

Synaptic in Ubuntu by default "consider recommends as dependencies".
So gnomesword in the past recommended sword-text that's why there was
bug report that arabic bible was installed along with gnomesword.

So yeah I'm all for downgrading dependencies on virtual packages to
Suggest. Cause in default Ubuntu install recomend = depends on first
alphanumeric package.

> So I'd say leave it in unless you can show it definitely causes problems.
>  If "Recommends:" causes issues somehow, then reduce it to a "Suggests:",
> but don't just drop it entirely.
>

kk

It's just to me virtual package is a bit of a burden and ambiguous and
a bit discriminating against packages which start with "x" ;-)

Debian Policy 3.6 documents virtual packages. Cooperative group of
packages can use virtual packages. And in addition there is an
authorative list of "blessed - mustuse" virtual packages

http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/virtual-package-names-list.txt

>> Similar virtual package "sword-text" was previously causing for the
>> arabic bible to be pulled in cause arabic bible is "sword-text-arasvd"
>> and it is sorted first alphanumerically.
>
> Old issue, no longer happening AFAIK... are you saying this bug currently
> exists with our latest packages??  Please explain!
>

Well I've removed "Recommends: sword-text" in xiphos to "fix" this bug.

>> I've played around with Jonathan's scripts. Scripts are nice =) But
>> this scripts are packaging binary files from a raw zip file into a
>> deb.
>
>> Something that would be great is to actually get hold of source (eg
>> OSIS formatted texts) and then use $format2mod utilities to build
>> these modules and recreate from scratch files that are packaged in
>> rawzip's.
>
> Sure, but in most cases, those sources are not made available by CrossWire,
> as far as I know... I'll let you try to persuade CrossWire to change their
> policy on that :)
>

Ouch =)))))))

>> If we actually want to build modules from sources then we need
>> sword-utils package =) cause otherwise we'll have to build depend on
>> each libsword soname package (libsword8, libsword9 etc)
>
> Hmmm.  Seems an odd argument for a sword-utils package to me... maybe an
> argument for for a libsword virtual package that has no content but depends
> on the current libswordN package?

Hmmm. Maybe I'm just hyped for -utils package. sword-texts can simply
depend on libsword-dev which always depends on the latest libsword
so-name =)

>
> Jonathan
>



-- 
With best regards


Dmitrijs Ledkovs (for short Dima),
Ледков Дмитрий Юрьевич