Bug#736832: closed by Sebastian Ramacher <sramacher at debian.org> (Re: Bug#736832: Double dependencies for vlc-nox)

[Sebastian Ramacher]

On 2014-08-19 11:00:38, Daniel James wrote:
> Hi Sebastian,
> 
> I don't mind this bug being closed if you think it isn't worth fixing.
> 
> Just for the record, this is not an artefact of packages.debian.org -
> taking a look at the debian/control file for the binary vlc-nox package
> in sid, you can see that...
> 
> 1. dependencies are listed on libavcodec55 plus most or all of the
> dependencies of libavcodec55, which is unnecessary, since depending on
> libavcodec55 should be enough.

No, dropping these dependencies would be wrong. For two reasons:

 - If the vlc plugin linking against libfoo uses something from libfoo only
   available in (>= 2) but libavcodec55 does only depend on libfoo (>= 1), then
   the libavcodec55 dependency is not enough.
 - If libavodec55 suddenly drops the dependency, vlc is broken.

That's why relying on transitive dependencies is bad and wrong.

> 2. there is a Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.15.6~) which should no longer be
> required, since all versions of dpkg currently available in Debian are
> newer than this.

Yes, we'll drop that when we come to it.

Cheers
-- 
Sebastian Ramacher
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-multimedia-maintainers/attachments/20140819/07e7875a/attachment.sig>