[Numpy-discussion] numpy docs dependency problem in Ubuntu

Bruce Southey bsouthey at gmail.com
Fri Feb 11 12:34:16 EST 2011


On 02/11/2011 10:11 AM, Pauli Virtanen wrote:
> Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:07:25 +0100, Pauli Virtanen wrote:
>> Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:40:57 -0500, Barry Warsaw wrote: [clip]
>>> Neither will be acceptable I think.  Prebuilt by upstream won't fly for
>>> Debian because they'd want the source and build process, and I don't
>>> see a feasible way for them to be prebuilt by Ubuntu that's any
>>> different than the current build process (which fails because of the
>>> cross-archive issue).
>>>
>>> Do you think it would be feasible for numpy to produce two tarballs -
>>> one with just the code and the other with just the docs?
>> That's exactly what I meant by "pre-built by upstream".
> Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant.
>
> Yes, in principle it is possible to split out stuff from the numpy/doc to
> a separate numpy-doc source tarball containing.
>
> However, I don't see why you (Debian&  Ubuntu) could not split the source
> package yourselves?
>
The apparent problem occurs when the user has to build the documentation 
from source as sphinx and matlibplot are dependencies. However, this is 
not a bug but an user error of failing to install the necessary 
dependencies before building. I presume that in Ubuntu (I know I can do 
that in other distros) I can install some package source without 
installing the binary package or even a compiler so does Ubuntu consider 
it a bug that the source will not compile?

I do not see why Ubuntu does not also provide the documentation since it 
already provides the numpy binary. Of course there is the issue of what 
type of documentation is provided but would fix/avoid the 'bug'.

I agree with Pauli, if Ubuntu wants the user to be able build the 
documentation then Ubuntu would have to create a special package with 
just the numpy documentation that includes the necessary dependencies 
(including numpy, matlibplot and sphinx).

Bruce





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