On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 08:00:14PM +0200, Savvas Radevic wrote:
> > first thanks for your report and trying to make Debian better. :-)
> Thanks! :)
>
> > But I have to close your report, because it is not a circular dependency as
> > written in Debian policy 7.2. The problem with circular depends are at the
> > dpkg part, not apt{itude}, and dpkg does not care about recommends.
>
> So "Recommends" doesn't matter?
Recommends does not really matter because dpkg and apt are allowed to
break them. An example: if A <-Depends-> B, then you cannot remove A
without breaking B and you cannot remove B without breaking A either.
So you are stuck. Now if A Depends on B, B recommends A, then you can
remove A without trouble.
> I'm not absolutely sure, but I think
> that on Ubuntu, packages under "Recommends" are installed, it would a
> pitty to make a specific version just to remove this type of
> dependency.
Please never do that: take the time to research an issue before mentionning
it in a bug report, else it amount to fear mongering.
(Both Debian and Ubuntu now handle Recommends in the same way: they are
installed by default but they still carry the weaker Recommends semantic,
instead of the Depends semantic).
> Also consider the fact that luckybackup-data is just plain data, it
> should not depend on the binary luckybackup, since it can be installed
> on its own (e.g. a user wants the graphics only).
I agree with that, but some maintainers insist that foo-data is "useless"
without foo and so should depend on foo. They are missing the point
of package management (because it is up to the users to decide what is useful
for them, not the maintainer), but I just let them use Recommends...
> And from 7.2 policy, "Enhances" seems much more appropriate:
> "Enhances
> This field is similar to Suggests but works in the opposite
> direction. It is used to declare that a package can enhance the
> functionality of another package."
>
> luckybackup-data enhances (i.e. is used by) luckybackup, not the other
> way around, isn't it?
>
> Quoting Bill Allombert:
> "foo <--> foo-data: The foo-data --> foo deps is generally wrong."
My personnal opinion is that anyone that install luckybackup-data instead
of luckybackup should not expect to get luckybackup installed.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <[email protected]>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
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