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  • why is Perl Build-Essential: yes?

    From Jonathan Dowland@21:1/5 to All on Mon Apr 28 17:00:01 2025
    "apt-cache show perl" lists it as "Build-Essential: yes". But why? It's
    not in the transitive dependencies of build-essential, nor /usr/share/doc/build-essential/list, and I can't find that header
    verbatim in Perl's debian/control in the source, nor in the binary (I
    checked perl_5.40.1-3_amd64.deb with dpkg-deb -I)


    Thanks,

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    👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
    ✎ jmtd@debian.org
    🔗 https://jmtd.net

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  • From Jonathan Dowland@21:1/5 to Sven Joachim on Mon Apr 28 18:10:01 2025
    On Mon Apr 28, 2025 at 4:46 PM BST, Sven Joachim wrote:
    On 2025-04-28 15:57 +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

    "apt-cache show perl" lists it as "Build-Essential: yes". But why? It's
    not in the transitive dependencies of build-essential,

    It is, dpkg-dev depends on perl:any.

    Thanks! For reasons I cannot explain, installing build-essential (in a
    Salsa CI environment) did not pull in perl.

    The tag is coming from an FTP Master override, see http://ftp.debian.org/debian/indices/override.sid.extra.main.gz.

    Double-Thanks! (This seems likely true for all packages with
    Build-Essential: yes)

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    👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
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  • From Chris Hofstaedtler@21:1/5 to All on Thu May 1 21:40:01 2025
    * Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org> [250428 18:02]:
    On Mon Apr 28, 2025 at 4:46 PM BST, Sven Joachim wrote:
    On 2025-04-28 15:57 +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
    Thanks! For reasons I cannot explain, installing build-essential (in a
    Salsa CI environment) did not pull in perl.

    The tag is coming from an FTP Master override, see >>http://ftp.debian.org/debian/indices/override.sid.extra.main.gz.

    Double-Thanks! (This seems likely true for all packages with
    Build-Essential: yes)

    Does anything actually _use_ the Build-Essential: yes line?

    Chris

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  • From Jonathan Dowland@21:1/5 to Chris Hofstaedtler on Tue May 6 11:00:01 2025
    On Thu May 1, 2025 at 8:37 PM BST, Chris Hofstaedtler wrote:
    Does anything actually _use_ the Build-Essential: yes line?

    I honestly don't know. I expect so, or the ftp-masters wouldn't be
    adding it to packages. Having it in the control metadata makes it
    visible to users (apt show foo).

    I personally feel that splaying the definition of build-essential across policy; the Depends: of package build-essential; the contents of /usr/share/build-essential/list; the contents of /usr/share/build-essential/essential-packages-list *and* FTP overrides
    is not ideal (especially since they don't agree), but I'm not currently planning to work on this.

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    👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
    ✎ jmtd@debian.org
    🔗 https://jmtd.net

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  • From Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues@21:1/5 to All on Tue May 6 12:50:01 2025
    Hi,

    Quoting Jonathan Dowland (2025-05-06 10:51:45)
    On Thu May 1, 2025 at 8:37 PM BST, Chris Hofstaedtler wrote:
    Does anything actually _use_ the Build-Essential: yes line?

    I honestly don't know.

    I've never seen it being used.

    I expect so, or the ftp-masters wouldn't be adding it to packages.

    I would expect that it is/was needed by software which doesn't want or can resolve dependencies. Same with /usr/share/build-essential/list. The file is redundant as one can just resolve the Depends of the build-essential package.

    Having it in the control metadata makes it visible to users (apt show foo).

    I personally feel that splaying the definition of build-essential across policy; the Depends: of package build-essential; the contents of /usr/share/build-essential/list; the contents of /usr/share/build-essential/essential-packages-list *and* FTP overrides
    is not ideal (especially since they don't agree), but I'm not currently planning to work on this.

    As the maintainer of a couple of packages which rely on what build-depends is, I'd like to see the it defined in Debian policy and the authoritative implementation in the build-essential package.

    For extra fun in this area there is the topic of turning the build-essential package into a Multi-Arch:same package which can then be used to even be the source of cross-architecture build dependencies. See #815172

    Thanks!

    cheers, josch
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