- dependencies on g++ *Version 3.4.2* - why does it depend on exactly this
single version
In general, all versions of GCC have changed the implemented C++ ABI in one way or another. This means that you cannot expect a C++ library compiled with GCC version x to work with a C++ program compiled with GCC version y if x != y. The situation will no doubt improve in the future, but up to now things have been like this (to put it more directly: the user should use the very same version of g++ the packager did use).
This is problably true for the first minor version (such as 3.3 or 3.4), but I doubt it is true for versions such as 3.4.2 and 3.4.3 ... - you should note, that Debian knows the packages g++-3.3 and g++-3.4, but g++ is just a metapackage depending on g++-3.3 - thus a dependency on g++(=3.4.2) is IMHO unsatisfiable.
Then, both 3.4.1 and 3.4.3 have bugs that affect the library. For 3.4.1 I was not completely sure the bug was in the compiler (as opposed to binutils or some other component of the toolchain). For 3.4.3 the situation was much worse and I had to quickly uninstall that version of the compiler from my machines.
I doubt these bugs are still contained in the current version of g++-3.4 in Debian - very likely they would have been reported to the Debian-BTS already. Furthermore version 3.4.2 is not available in Debian (anymore) - and a dependency on a single version is always dangerous ...
Finally, I believe we now depend on C++ features that are not correctly supported by 3.3.x.
Hmm - I built and used the library successfully, but only very small parts of this library :-)
- missing dependencies on automake1.9 and autoconf
Automake and autoconf are only needed by developers. People downloading tarballs or packages do not need Automake, Autoconf or Libtool. This is, at least, the intention. If I am mistaken, please let me know.
But they are required to build the package, aren't they? Thus I suppose they should be listed as build-dependencies ...
Another two points:
- Shouldn't it be called libppl instead of ppl? - To allow multiple versions of ppl being installed at the same time (probably because of the g++-dependencies mentioned above), a version-number should be appended to the name of the main package, such as libppl0 or libppl8
Thanks for all your great afford, Michael