Bug#428415: dh-make-perl: dependency diagnostics misleading

[Andreas J Koenig]

>>>>> On Mon, 6 Aug 2007 17:14:27 +0200, gregor herrmann <gregor+debian at comodo.priv.at> said:

  > On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:17:16 +0200, Andreas J Koenig wrote:
  > Thanks for your bug report and sorry for the late reply.

Thanks Gregor for taking care of the ticket!

 >> We would suggest that the error message from dependency checking be
 >> amended when called without the --requiredeps option. Instead of saying:
 >> 
 >> Needs the following modules for which there are no debian
 >> packages available: Gearman::Client, Gearman::Server,
 >> Sys::Syslog, Sys::Syscall, Perlbal, Net::Netmask, Danga::Socket,
 >> Gearman::Client::Async
 >> 
 >> it probably should rather say:
 >> 
 >> Needs the following modules: Gearman::Client, Gearman::Server,
 >> Sys::Syslog, Sys::Syscall, Perlbal, Net::Netmask, Danga::Socket,
 >> Gearman::Client::Async; you probably want to check for the
 >> availablility of these modules using the --requiredeps option.

  > Hm, I don't think this is correct.
  > If I understand the source code of dh-make-perl correctly
  > * it searches for the modules in any case
  > * it issues the above warning if --requiredeps was not used
  > * it issues an error (= the same text) and dies if --requiredeps was
  >   used

  > --requiredeps doesn't seem to do what your suggestion says, AFAICS.  
 
I think my point was that I apparently got a wrong message from
dh-make-perl.

 * I did not use the --requiredeps option (for lack of knowledge)

 * I had no apt-file installed (for lack of knowledge)

 * the message I got told me that none of the eight packages was
   available as debian package. Because apt-file was not installed on my
   system, dh-make-perl could not know if the packages were available or
   not.

If the implementation is such that it queries apt-file in any case, this
does not necessarily bother me. But if it tells me a wrong result then
it bothers me.

There are many ways to resolve the issue. For example just insisting
that all users of dh-make-perl must install apt-file and keep it
uptodate is probably a much better solution. I certainly came to the
conclusion that it is what I want.

I hope I could make point clearer to you.

 >> Additionally we would suggest that the documentation of the
 >> --requiredeps option be extended. Instead of saying
 >> 
 >> dependency tracking requires the apt-file package installed and
 >> updated
 >> 
 >> it probably should say something like
 >> 
 >> dependency tracking requires the apt-file package installed and
 >> the command 'apt-file update' must have been called not too long
 >> ago

  > Yup, that could be made more clear, thanks.

Thanks!

-- 
Dr. Andreas J Koenig, Development
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