[php-maint] Bug#627937: Bug#627937: php-pear should depend on php5-dev

[Ondřej Surý]

On 26.5.2011, at 21:02, Clint Byrum <clint at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> Excerpts from Ondřej Surý's message of Thu May 26 08:57:57 -0700 2011:
>> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 19:23, Clint Byrum <clint at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>>> Package: php5
>>> Version: 5.3.5-1
>>> Severity: normal
>>> Tags: patch
>>> User: ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
>>> Usertags: origin-ubuntu oneiric ubuntu-patch
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Forwarded from Ubuntu:
>>> 
>>> https://launchpad.net/bugs/634359
>>> 
>>> In Ubuntu, the attached patch was applied to achieve the following:
>>> 
>>> Binary package hint: php-pear
>>> 
>>> Quoting from the bug report:
>>>> Most of PECL packages require /usr/bin/phpize and some other php5-dev
>>>> files to get installed/compiled (i.e. pecl/fribidi), but php5-dev is
>>>> not always installed.
>> 
>> Are there any PECL packages which don't require php5-dev?  The most
>> elegant solution would be to move /usr/bin/pecl to php5-dev and maybe
>> add some note about missing php5-dev when installing PECL package via
>> pear install.
>> 
>> Or what about adding those two prints to PEAR/Builder.php:
>> 
>>        $err = $this->_runCommand($this->config->get('php_prefix')
>>                                . "phpize" .
>>                                $this->config->get('php_suffix'),
>>                                array(&$this, 'phpizeCallback'));
>>        if (PEAR::isError($err)) {
>>            return $err;
>>        }
>> 
>>        if (!$err) {
>>            print "If the command failed with 'phpize: not found' then
>> you need to install php5-dev package";
>>            print "You can do it by running 'apt-get install php5-dev'
>> as a root user";
>>            return $this->raiseError("`phpize' failed");
>>        }
>> 
>> This seems less intrusive then installing php5-dev for all php-pear users.
>> 
>> What do you think?
>> 
> 
> Interesting idea. I do like the idea of allowing sysadmins to  keep the
> number of -dev packages to a minimum on production systems. The reason
> pecl is being considered as a runtime command and not -dev I think is
> because its for installing stuff that isn't available as a .deb, so
> its most likely use case is on a runtime host, but one that probably
> doesn't mind keeping php5-dev installed, or that will install it just
> to get the .so and then can remove it without removing all of PEAR.
> 
> I like it, and I'd drop the Ubuntu change upon the one you specify above
> being made in Debian.

The message is there, I'll do the move of pecl command in next commit, it will probably also need some description change. Another idea which I am just thinking is to create php-pear-dev package which would include the pecl command and dependency on php5-dev, but that may be too much...

> One thing, how about after these changes, php-pear adds a
> Recommends: php5-dev, so that the casual user will still obtain the
> functionality. This would also help Ubuntu users who already have the
> Depends: line not be surprised when they install php-pear and expect
> pecl to work.

The problem is that php5-dev draws full build tool chain as a dependency including autotools, libssl-dev and all it's dependencies, so I don't like this idea very much.

O.