On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 04:20:04 +0100, William Ballard wrote: > Kernel module source packages generated Debian packages which may not be > installable. For instance, alsa-source does not depend on alsa-base, > but the generated alsa-modules does. ndiswrapper-source does the same > with ndiswrapper-utils.
Right. Do you regard this as a problem? > Is there a flag to dpkg to refuse to install unless dependencies are > met? I am not sure what you mean. That is dpkg's default behavior. > What ends up happening now is the package ends up installing broken. I am not sure what you mean by this. Here is what happens when I install an alsa-modules package in the absence of alsa-base: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/src$ sudo dpkg -i alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686_1.0.7-3~unreleased1+10.00.Custom_i386.deb Selecting previously deselected package alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686. (Reading database ... 192428 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686 (from alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686_1.0.7-3~unreleased1+10.00.Custom_i386.deb) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686: alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686 depends on alsa-base (>= 1.0.1-1); however: Package alsa-base is not installed. dpkg: error processing alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686 (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Errors were encountered while processing: alsa-modules-2.4.27-1-686 If you are complaining about the fact that dpkg leaves behind unpacked files when it aborts then I suggest you file a bug report against dpkg. This can then be merged with #15162 and the twelve reports already merged with it which complain about dpkg leaving behind unpacked files in various other circumstances. > The generalized form of this question is how does one deal with > missing dependencies when using dpkg and not apt. One downloads the missing packages and dpkg --install's them. BTW have you tried module-assistant? -- Thomas Hood