Bug#930603: libdockapp-dev: pkg-config file Requires xext without dependency on libxext-dev

[Jeremy Sowden]

On 2021-10-09, at 18:52:49 +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> On 2021-10-09 Jeremy Sowden <jeremy at azazel.net> wrote:
> > On 2019-08-13, at 19:09:33 +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> >> On 2019-06-16 Douglas Torrance wrote:
> >>> On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 7:30 AM Andreas Metzler wrote:
> >>>> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/dockapp.pc:
> >>>> Requires: x11 xext xpm
>
> >>>> Therefore anything build-depending on libdockapp-dev and using
> >>>> pkg-config to locate the library will FTBFS unless it has a
> >>>> direct b-d on libxext-dev.
> [...]
> >> the respective patch moves "Requires: x11 xext xpm" to
> >> Requires.private.  That does not really fix the bug. pkg-config
> >> --cflags requires that not only Requires but also Requires.private
> >> are is resolvable (even when --static is not present) i.e. xext.pc
> >> would still need to be present.
>
> >> I think this would be the correct fix:
> >> - @echo 'Requires.private: x11 xext xpm' >> $@
> >> + @echo 'Requires.private: x11 xpm' >> $@
> >> + @echo 'Libs.private: -lext' >> $@
>
> > Doesn't that mean that we lose information?  What if libxext is
> > installed in a non-standard location, and we need the -L${libdir} to
> > find it?
>
> > I think the right thing to do is to add a b-d on libxext-dev to
> > libdockapp-dev.
>
> <TLDR> Adding libxext-dev to libdockapp-dev's Depends would work
> perfectly fine for me.

I've pushed a commit to add the dependency, plus a few other things.

> ------- I think it is a little bit of grey area, not and black and
> white. Having xext in Requires.private broke pkgconfig and introduced
> this bug. Some third-party packages needed to work around this and we
> could inflate libdockapp-dev's dependencies to fix it. There is no
> real gain for e.g.  Debian packages in having xext in
> Requires.private.
>
> OTOH for non-dist packages you raise a valid point. However the
> breakage seems to be constrained to a corner case:
>  + xext is installed in non-standard location and this non-standard
>    location is a different one than either x11 or xpm
>  + static linking is wanted. (Or we are on an exotic arch which
>    requires explicit linking against all indirect deps).

Agreed.

J.
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