Possible Debian/Ubuntu packaging issue (was: [be] Re: [LinuxUser] bibledit-3.7 released)

[Jonathan Marsden]

Teus Benschop wrote:

> It may be that the person who created the Debian (or Ubuntu) package,
> set some rules so that Bibledit looks like it depends on Bibletime.
> But there's no such dependency. I'm cc-ing this to the
> bibledit-development list in the hope that the person who packages
> bibledit may read this and hopefully resolve that in future packages
> he uploads.

Mea culpa... maybe??  I'm not very convinced that this is really the 
problem Kim is reporting.

A Recommends: bibletime line has been in the debian/control file of 
bibledit packages since at least 2006, *long* before I became involved, 
and is present in the currently official Ubuntu bibledit packages for 
Intrepid, bibledit 2.2-2.1.  I left it in debian/control (seeing no real 
reason to remove it) when I created my newer 3.5/3.6/3.7 packages.

This was modified into a Suggests: in my very recent (2009-04-18) 
revised package bibledit 3.6-2, which will not see the light of day, 
since this morning I made a bibledit 3.7-1 package that also includes 
this same change :)  I hope to test that some more tonight, and I intend 
to upload it to my PPA and propose it for upload to Debian unstable if 
all looks good.

A "Recommends:" entry really should not prevent installation in any 
case, it is simply a recommendation.  It definitely does not indicate a 
dependency, that is what Depends: does!  So there may be something else 
going on here.  It sounds like someone or something is confused about 
what Recommends: does??

In bibledit 3.6-2 (and so also bibledit 3.7-1) the Recommends: was 
already reduced to Suggests:, which is even weaker.  I don't know of any 
.deb package installer that acts on Suggests: lines automatically.  They 
are just a suggestion :)  So, if the Recommends: bibletime line part of 
is what caused the issue for Kim, my latest packages should avoid this.

> On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 13:39 -0400, Kim Blewett wrote:

> > Yesterday I saw an auto-update available for Bibledit. I told it to
> > install but got this message:
> >     "recommended dependency: BibleTime is recommended to be installed
> > but is not going to be installed."

To track this down, we would need to know exactly what is in 
/etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/* on this system.  The 
output of the command

  apt-cache policy

on that machine would be helpful too.  Knowing precisely what command 
(using what installer) was used to try to install the bibledit package 
when this error message appeared would also be very useful.

Something like:

  sudo apt-get install bibletime --no-install-recommends

should work fine, even if there is some strange issue with Recommends: 
blocking installs/updates on Kim's machine.  Waiting for bibledit 3.7-1 
is also fine, and probably appropriate, if Kim's machine is looking at 
my PPA for updates.  A bibledit 3.7-1 package for Intrepid should appear 
there in under 24 hours, probably more like 8 hours.

If that does not fix the issue, and Kim is using packages from my PPA, 
the best way forward would be for Kim to open a bug against bibledit 
which can be assigned to me... sadly there is currently no way (that I 
know of) to open bugs in LaunchPad against packages that are only in a 
PPA, but not yet in Ubuntu itself.

If Kim is using official Ubuntu packages and repositories only, not my 
newer stuff, then this looks like a bug that could be filed against 
either the current Ubuntu bibledit or possibly the installer program 
concerned (apt? aptitude? update-manager?) on launchpad.net .

> > It's an Eee PC 904HA with Ubuntu Intrepid and XFCE installed, all
> > auto-updates.

The new bibledit 3.6 packages are definitely not part of Ubuntu 
Intrepid, so I *think* that Kim must be testing, using my PPA for these 
installs?  The lack of any bibleedit version info in the bug report 
makes it hard to be sure.

I'm very happy to have users testing these newer packages, that's great 
to see -- but bug reports for them should probably not be being sent to 
a LinuxUser mailing list that I'm not even subscribed to ... I'm not 
sure how that happened.  I know the packages I created do not include 
any info suggesting people do that :)  My PPA is very clear about what 
it contains: "Description: Testing ground for whatever packages I am 
currently working on packaging!" .

SUMMARY:

If you add my PPA to your apt sources, and something breaks as a 
result... thanks for testing my work, and do please let me know!  If a 
user knows the URL of my PPA, then they know my LaunchPad id, so worst 
case they can email me via its web contact form.  My email address is 
also in the debian/changelog of all my packages.

Jonathan

P.S.  I just now created and uploaded a bibledit 3.7-1~intrepid1 package 
to my PPA during my lunch break, so if that is where Kim's machine is 
looking for a new bibledit package, it should be ready in a few hours, 
as soon as the Ubuntu build machines get around to building it for us -- 
this usually takes a few minutes, but right now it looks like they are 
very busy building all the official packages for Ubuntu Jaunty!