Bug#865720: libconfig-model-dpkg-perl: hard-codes the list of virtual packages, mistake in recent update

[Russ Allbery]

Paul Wise <pabs at debian.org> writes:

> libconfig-model-dpkg-perl hard-codes the list of virtual package names
> in the @virtual_list array in the lib/Config/Model/Dpkg/Dependency.pm
> file. The authoritative list is available in the debian-policy package.
> Config::Model::Dpkg should depend on debian-policy and use the Perl
> equivalent of the below command to extract the list of virtual
> packages. This would prevent the kind of mistake that was recently done
> in the below commit (wish -> virtual-mysql-testsuitewish).

It's worth noting that registering a virtual package with Policy is
optional if it is used among a cooperating set of packages, and there are
numerous virtual packages in Debian that are not listed there.

Policy is not particularly clear about this, but note the parenthetical
in 3.6 here:

    They should not use virtual package names (except privately, amongst a
    cooperating group of packages) unless they have been agreed upon and
    appear in the list of virtual package names.

That said, if there's some desire for automated consumption of the list
from the Policy package, I'd be happy to provide it in a machine-readable
format.  I wonder if there would be some merit in building a separate
binary package from the debian-policy source package that includes a few
lists like that (archive sections also come to mind) in machine-readable
formats in /usr/share somewhere.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>