devscripts doesn't depend on equivs (for mk-build-deps)

[Michał Sawicz]

Steps:
* install devscripts
* $ mk-build-deps debian/control

Expected:
* works

Current:
* mk-build-deps: You must have equivs installed to use this program.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: devscripts 2.16.2ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-24.43-generic 4.4.10
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-24-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zcommon znvpair zavl
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Mon Jun 27 16:26:23 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-05-06 (51 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160420.1)
SourcePackage: devscripts
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Ivan Gagis (igagis)]

still present in bionic

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

Seems fine now:

$ lsb_release -sd
Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS

$ apt-cache depends devscripts | grep equivs
  Suggests: equivs

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

Ah that was the case all along… but Suggests is not enough…

[Mikko Rantalainen (mira)]

I agree, if "mk-build-deps" completely fails, it should be Recommends at minimum, probably even Depends. (Tested with Ubuntu 18.04 and I found this bug via Google when trying to figure out why `mk-build-deps` failed.)

[baltic (bugsgenerator)]

Can't believe it's still not fixed even for 21.10

[Stefano Rivera (stefanor)]

devscripts doesn't depend on every dependency needed for every command to work, to keep the dependency stack down.

Instead, it tells you what you need to make mk-build-deps work, at runtime.

This is intentional.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Further to comment #8, closing Papercuts task.