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

[Francesco P. Lovergine]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 09:33:57PM -0600, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> tags 550299 + wontfix
> thanks
> 
> Hi Steffen,
> 
> Steffen Moeller wrote:
> > Gerrit Pape wrote:
> >> On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 06:56:48PM +0200, Adeodato Simó wrote:
> 
> >>>   * 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.
> [...] 
> > dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of tk8.4:
> >  tk depends on tk8.4 (>= 8.4.16-2).
> 
> Aggh, yes.  I am not all a fan of how the tk packages are set up.
> 
> > You may argue that the problem is with the tk package, which should also allow
> > newer version of tk.
> 
> Yep.  I do not want to create more hacks, so I think this is in the
> hands of the tk maintainers now.  See #570164 (gitk bug) and #516178
> (tk bug).
> 
> A dependency on wish would be satisfied by tk8.3, which I think makes
> it a nonstarter.  Marking wontfix.
> 
> Still, thanks for working towards a smaller disk footprint for Debian.
> I do hope this gets fixed.
> 
> Jonathan
> 

It is not clear to me what you are trying to obtain. You must have the default
tcl/tk version installed (currently 8.4). Also you can have 8.5 installed, but
you can remove it if you had not installed packages that depend on 8.5 strictly.
It is exactly the same you get with gcc default and gcc-X.Y versions. So what?
The only true problem is the historical presence of alternatives, which should
be dropped. Default Tcl/Tk version is not something the admin should be able
to set, because it is error prone. At the same time, IMHO depending on wish
is an error. It is much better depending on default tk. Also that kind of
dependencies should be dropped. Please cfr:

http://pkg-tcltk.alioth.debian.org/tcltk-policy.html/ch-module_packages.html#s-dependencies


-- 
Francesco P. Lovergine