NAME

       Edos-builddebcheck - Check satisfiability of Debian package build-dependencies

SYNOPSIS

       edos-builddebcheck [option] ... Packagefile Sourcepackagefile

DESCRIPTION

       edos-builddebcheck reads a set of Debian package descriptions from the file Packagefile, each of which is
       in   the   format   of   deb-control(5),  and  a  set  of  source  package  descriptions  from  the  file
       Sourcepackagefile. All packages described in the file Packagefile must  have  the  same  value  of  their
       Architecture (if it is different from all).

       For  instance,  the  Packages  and  Sources files as found on a Debian mirror server, or in the directory
       /var/lib/apt/lists/ of a Debian system, are suitable as input files.

       edos-builddebcheck verifies for every of the source packages (from Sourcepackagefile) whether its  build-
       dependencies,  build-indep-dependencies  and  build-conflicts  can  be satisfied from the binary packages
       provided in Packagefile. Only build-relations that apply to  the  architecture  (see  below  on  how  the
       architecture is determined) are taken into account.

       Note  that this is not the same thing as checking whether a distribution can be rebuild from scratch, for
       several reasons:

       1.  No  actual  compilation  is  taking  place,  this  tool  only  does  a  static  analysis  of  package
       relationships.

       2.   The  binary packages in Packages are not necessarily those that are the result of the compilation of
       the source packages in Sourcepackagefile.

       3. We do not check for cycles. For instance, suppose that we have source packages a and b both generating
       one binary package of respectively the same name, and that a build-depends on b and b build-depends on a.
       Then we can not rebuild the set of packages from scratch because of the cycle.  However,  if  we  already
       have  binary  packages  a and b then we can recompile both of them. Consequently, edos-builddebcheck will
       not report an error in this case.

       4.  The  underlying  logical  machine  does  a  complete  analysis  of  alternatives,  and  might  report
       satisfiability of constraints in case actual tools (like apt) fail to find a solution.

       Build-essential  packages  are  ignored  in unversioned build-dependencies.  The (architecture dependant)
       list of build-essential packages is read from the configuration file.  If that file is not available than
       an architecture independent default value is used.

OPTIONS

       -a, --architecture architecture
              Check for compilation on architecture. Usually it is not necessary  to  specify  the  architecture
              since it can be derived from the Packages file.

       -be, --binexplain
              Add all explanations why build-dependencies are not satisfiable. Without that option some of these
              explanations  may  be  missing  from the output in case a source package build-depends on a binary
              package that exists in Packagefile file but that edos-debchecks finds not to be installable inside
              Packagefile.

FILES

       /etc/edos-builddebcheck.conf
              Configuration file for edos-builddebcheck

AUTHOR

       Edos-builddebcheck  has  been  written  by  Stefano  Zacchiroli  <zack@debian.org>   and   Ralf   Treinen
       <treinen@debian.org>.  It  heavily  relies on edos-debcheck which has been written by Jerome Vouillon for
       the EDOS project.

SEE ALSO

       deb-control(5),edos-debcheck(1)

EDOS                                               2010-04-22                              EDOS-BUILDDEBCHECK(1)