On Wed, 2023-05-10 at 08:35 -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > On Sun 07 May 2023 at 11:14AM +02, Ansgar wrote: > > Debian's dependency system requires to explicitly declare > > Depends/Conflicts/Replaces/Breaks, but for obvious reasons we > > cannot do > > that for packages outside Debian's ecosystem. > > > > The same is true for diversions/alternatives/* or anything else > > requiring coordination among all users: the dpkg ecosystem has too > > many > > practical limitations to support non-Debian packages on anything > > but a > > "it might work" basis (which is usually "good enough"). (This is > > even > > true for packages within the Debian ecosystem, especially when one > > considers partially implemented features like multi-arch.) > > I don't think this is the consensus view.
So why do we allow changes that require listing all reverse dependencies in Breaks then? This is known to be wrong for all non- listed packages, e.g., all local/vendor/derivative-specific packages. > Our derivatives are among our users, for example, and we care about > them being able to add packages in appropriate ways. As far as I understand, we do explicitly *not* care about our derivatives with regard to merged-/usr as some packages in Debian recommend users to move *away* from merged-/usr to split-/usr on derivatives, i.e., to an unsupported fs layout. AFAIR the ctte felt that doing so on derivatives is fine for packages in Debian (w/o an explicit formal ruling). Ansgar