Packaging guidelines for packaging vala bindings

[Hans de Goede]

Hi,

On 01/17/2012 04:22 PM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 02:16:19PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> On 01/17/2012 02:08 PM, Marc-André Lureau wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Ralf Corsepius<rc040203 at freenet.de>   wrote:
>>>> I disagree. Like other "exotic languages", anything related to it should
>>>> remain "strictly optional".
>>> Unlike other bindings which are binaries and link or require external
>>> packages, vapi files are small plain text file that can be used to
>>> read an API more easily than their C or gobject introspection gir
>>> counterpars.
>>>
>> Irrelevant ... these files are only usable as with a vala toolchain
>> and thus are just "diskspace pollution" to users who have no use for
>> vala.
>
> I agree with Ralf.  Vala files are meaningless except for people who
> care about vala, so they should go in a subpackage.
>
> More to the point, presumably if the vala files were included in
> *-devel, they'd also cause an explicit or implicit dependency on
> vala-devel, which would mean the vala toolchain being pulled in for
> many packages, and that's totally unacceptable.

I agree on that point, and as said in my original mail, I think
we should come up with a way to package vala "bindings" so that
they don't end up dragging in any extra deps.

Once that is done, then just adding the vala bindings to the
devel-package likely takes less disk space for those who
do install them, then the meta data needed for a separate subpackage,
and that metadata needs to be downloaded and *stored* by all users,
not just those installing the -devel package.

Regards,

Hans