Re: [bug-gsrc] Update Bazaar, add Python (dependency)

[Brian Gough]

At Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:44:22 -0500,
Luke Shumaker wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 2011-01-31 at 16:24 +0000, Brian Gough wrote:
> > At Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:51:50 -0500,
> > Luke Shumaker wrote:
> > > This updates to the latest non-beta release of Bazaar, and adds Python,
> > > which is needed by Bazaar.
> > > 
> > > For Bazaar, GPG currently gives back a message about the public key not
> > > being found.
> > > 
> > > For Python, I cannot figure out how to fetch the sig file (see the
> > > Makefile for info).  The public keys for Python are at
> > 
> > Thanks for the Bazaar patch.
> > 
> > I've been reluctant to add Python as a full dependency, due to its
> > size and the fact that most people will have it installed already.
> > 
> > I think we really need some kind of mechanism to specify system
> > packages like python-dev and tell the user to "apt-get install
> > python-dev" (or whatever is appropriate on their system) if needed.
> 
> I've been thinking about a system to tag a package as installed by
> another source, and to treat it as successfully installed.  This gives
> me two questions:
>  1) Would you accept such a patch?

Yes

>  2) Would I have to maintain compatibility with existing `.gar/',
> `cookies/' and such?  Not that I plan on breaking it, but it will
> probably affect design decisions.

The .gar stuff shouldn't be needed, cookies would be.

Essentially what is needed is a Makefile with an install target that
creates the appropriate cookie if the package is found on the system,
and otherwise prints a message telling the user the necessary
'apt-get' command or similar.

Then it can just be specified as a normal dependency.