Bug#622396: wrong and harmful needless-dependency-on-jre

[Rene Engelhard]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.4.3
Severity: important

Hi,

apparently the new lintian added new wrong tags. E.g.:

W: libreoffice-gcj: needless-dependency-on-jre
N:
N:    The package appear to be a Java library and depending on one or more
N:    JRE/JDK packages. As of 05 Apr 2010, the Java Policy no longer mandates
N:    that Java libraries depend on Java Runtimes.
N:
N:    If the library package ships executables along with the library, then
N:    please consider making this an application package or move the binaries
N:    to a (new) application package.
N:
N:    If there is otherwise a valid reason for this dependency, please
N:    override the tag.
N:
N:    Refer to
N:    http://packages.qa.debian.org/j/java-common/news/20100405T221415Z.html
N:    and http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=227587 for details.
N:
N:    Severity: normal, Certainty: possible
N:
W: libreoffice-gcj: needless-dependency-on-jre
W: libreoffice-gcj: needless-dependency-on-jre
W: libreoffice-gcj: needless-dependency-on-jre
W: libreoffice-gcj: needless-dependency-on-jre
W: libreoffice-gcj: needless-dependency-on-jre

Hmm.

A package which sole purpose is to provide jars compiled to jar.sos for use with gcj
shouldn't depen on gcj? So that installing it would be a no-op and "thus rendering this
package useless". Actually I'd argue that a -gcj package not depending on gcj-jre (or
whatever else similar) is RC-buggy (serious). Therefore the severity, I consider this
warning harmful, as it surely will cause people to get rid of the dependency.

Regards,

Rene

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.1
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils               2.20.1-16         The GNU assembler, linker and bina
ii  diffstat               1.53-1            produces graph of changes introduc
ii  dpkg-dev               1.15.8.10         Debian package development tools
ii  file                   5.04-5            Determines file type using "magic"
ii  gettext                0.18.1.1-3        GNU Internationalization utilities
ii  intltool-debian        0.35.0+20060710.1 Help i18n of RFC822 compliant conf
ii  libapt-pkg-perl        0.1.24+b1         Perl interface to libapt-pkg
ii  libclass-accessor-perl 0.34-1            Perl module that automatically gen
ii  libipc-run-perl        0.89-1            Perl module for running processes
ii  libparse-debianchangel 1.1.1-2.1         parse Debian changelogs and output
ii  libtimedate-perl       1.2000-1          collection of modules to manipulat
ii  liburi-perl            1.54-2            module to manipulate and access UR
ii  locales                2.11.2-10         Embedded GNU C Library: National L
ii  man-db                 2.5.7-8           on-line manual pager
ii  perl [libdigest-sha-pe 5.10.1-17         Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 

lintian recommends no packages.

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
pn  binutils-multiarch            <none>     (no description available)
pn  libtext-template-perl         <none>     (no description available)
ii  man-db                        2.5.7-8    on-line manual pager

-- no debconf information
Grüße/Regards,

Rene