python-pypcap has a soft dependency on dpkt, which is not packaged

[Mike Pontillo]

Binary package hint: python-pypcap

(Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this should be a bug; it could also be interpreted as an enhancement request to add a package for "dpkt".)

Today I was investigating the python packages that provide an interface to libpcap. One of those pacakges is python-pypcap. The first thing I did was look at the example scripts included in the package:

$ dpkg --listfiles python-pypcap | grep examples
/usr/share/doc/python-pypcap/examples
/usr/share/doc/python-pypcap/examples/test.pcap
/usr/share/doc/python-pypcap/examples/test.py
/usr/share/doc/python-pypcap/examples/testsniff.py

... which quickly led me to find that a required dependency for the example was not present:

$ /usr/share/doc/python-pypcap/examples/testsniff.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/doc/python-pypcap/examples/testsniff.py", line 4, in <module>
    import dpkt, pcap
ImportError: No module named dpkt

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04
Codename: hardy

$ apt-cache policy python-pypcap
python-pypcap:
  Installed: 1.1.2+debian-1
  Candidate: 1.1.2+debian-1
  Version table:
 *** 1.1.2+debian-1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

A quick Google search shows that the package can be found here:
http://code.google.com/p/dpkt/

I could not find an existing Debian/Ubuntu package for dpkt, but it would have been nice to automatically get it installed so that the included example would work out of the box. Of course, I ended up just to installing it manually, but now if a .deb package is ever introduced I'll have to purge it and reinstall.