Re: sometimes-dependency, linux-image-2.6.18-1-486

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> writes:

> On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 09:35:49AM +0200, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>> Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> writes:
>> > On Mon, Oct 16, 2006 at 04:08:17PM -0500, Clarence Risher wrote:
>> >> And that leads me to the general question, on the topic of 
>> >> sometimes-dependencies.  Does debian have any facility to handle such? 
>> >> linux-image-2.6.18-1-486 doesnt technically depend on yaird, since it 
>> >> can use any mkinitrd script (of which there are many, provided by other 
>> >> packages), but when it does pick mkinitrd.yaird then it requires an up 
>> >> to date version of yaird.
>> >
>> > Conflicts. The package doesn't depend on yaird, but it does (should)
>> > conflict with insufficient versions.
>> 
>> You can also use
>> Depends: yarid (>= 1.2-3) | initramfs-tools | initrd-toos | foo | bar
>> 
>> Any one of them will do but if yarid is used then the version must be
>> new enough.
>
> Isn't there the possibility here that you have both yaird (< 1.2-3) and
> another suitable package installed? The deps would be met, but
> linux-image-* might choose yaird and build a non-working initramfs.
> (The initramfs generators don't conflict with each other.)
>
> Hamish

Then you do actually need

Depends: yarid | initramfs-tools | initrd-toos | foo | bar
Conflicts: yarid (<= 1.2-3)


What happens if you have multiple initrd/initramfs generators
installed? Do you get multiple images?

MfG
        Goswin