zlib dependency can be satisfied without .pc file

[David King]

I updated the simple-scan ebuild for Gentoo:

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336900

and found that simple-scan depends on a version of zlib with a .pc file (version 1.2.5, I believe, which is currently marked as unstable in Gentoo). However, then I discovered that Debian has a patch that drops this requirement to zlib 1.2.3 (maybe less), which is marked as stable in Gentoo:

http://packages.debian.org/experimental/simple-scan

I am not sure if you want this patch merged upstream, as Ubuntu has the most recent version of zlib, but attaching the Debian patch so that you can comment.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Thanks for that David. I'm not sure what the correct solution here is, I prefer to use the .pc file, but there may be a number of systems that do not support it. I guess both could be handled with some autotools magic. Having this bug is handy anyway in case others hit the problem.

[bojo42 (bojo42)]

I just like to note that zlib dependency checking also doesn't work on lucid. That's why i always need to disable it while backporting, even though the dependency is matched via debian/control.

[Michael Nagel (nailor)]

Robert, could this be merged? This is small, self-contained and it should be trivial to verify that things still work afterwards.
Also, it makes people happy if their input has an effect...

[Michael Nagel (nailor)]

IRC log:

(09:22:49) Michael Nagel: zlib dependency can be satisfied without .pc file https://bugs.launchpad.net/simple-scan/+bug/637938
(09:23:06) Michael Nagel: is that reasonable or should it be fixed in gentoo packaging
(09:24:08) robert_ancell: The "correct" way of doing things is to use the .pc file, and any recent distributions will be using that
(09:24:32) robert_ancell: so I think everyone who has the issue will have solved it by now (using the patch), and it wont be a problem in the future
(09:24:38) Michael Nagel: ok, lets reject the suggestion
(09:24:42) robert_ancell: sure
(09:25:38) robert_ancell: note I kind of said that in the bug, and it's only open so people searching for it find out how to patch it

i will close this bug, so it stops showing up and stops drawing my attention away from other bugs.

closing the bug does not delete it and it can still be found via google or launchpad search (but perhaps not with default settings hiding closed bugs).