[Pkg-tcltk-devel] Bug#550299: gitk: package depends explicitly on tk, wish may be more appropriate

[Francesco P. Lovergine]

On Fri, Oct 09, 2009 at 03:45:57PM +0200, Steffen Moeller wrote:
> Gerrit Pape wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 09, 2009 at 01:31:56PM +0200, Steffen Moeller wrote:
> >>> Hi, please see http://bugs.debian.org/503113
> >> I should have reopened that bug probably. With tk8.4 remaining unremovable for
> >> gitk, and  r-core-dev depending on tk8.5, and me wanting to use the newer
> >> version, I still suggest to somehow change the dependency. How about
> >> tk(>=8.4)|tk8.5 ?
> > 
> > Hmm, the report above suggest that you can remove tk8.4:
> > 
> > On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 06:56:48PM +0200, Adeodato Sim? wrote:
> >> Comments:
> >>
> >>   * there is a "tk" pacakge, so "Depends: tk (>= 8.4)" would solve the
> >>     concerns in #456423 that one can't just have tk8.5 installed.
> > 
> > Was that wrong advice?
> 
> In my mind - yes.
> 
> $ LANG=C sudo dpkg --purge tk8.4 tk
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of tk:
>  gitk depends on tk (>= 8.4).
> dpkg: error processing tk (--purge):
>  dependency problems - not removing
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of tk8.4:
>  tk depends on tk8.4 (>= 8.4.16-2).
> dpkg: error processing tk8.4 (--purge):
>  dependency problems - not removing
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  tk
>  tk8.4
> 
> You may argue that the problem is with the tk package, which should also allow
> newer version of tk. For the moment it does not:
> 
> $ apt-cache show tk | grep Depends
> Depends: tcl (= 8.4.16-2), tk8.4 (>= 8.4.16-2)
> 
> This is probably intentional, since it grants a guarantee for the availability
> of a well-known version of tk. I personally find the explicit dependency on tcl
>  wrong, though and would prefer for the tk package something like
> 
> Depends: tk8.4 (>= 8.4.16-2) | tk8.5 (>= 8.5.7-1)
> 
> I am CCing the tk maintainers mailing list, who have more of an oversight on
> the issue than me.
> 
> Cheers,
> 

This is intentional to ensure having _one_ reference version of tcl/tk.
Packages should depend on that, if it is not strictly required a major
version. Anyway, it is moving to 8.5 within the squeeze release cycle.

-- 
Francesco P. Lovergine