Re: suspicious dependency requirement of new backported libreoffice version
On Sun, 15 Jul 2018 at 10:20:46 +0200, rene@debian.org wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 10:31:47AM +0800, ksqsf wrote:
> > It's said that such requirement (">") is likely to be a mistake. Is
> > this a problem?
>
> No, it's not.
>
> The packages have that dependency for ages to be safe -core and -common
> match.
To clear this up a bit:
The actual dependency in the package metadata seems to be "(>> version)",
which is valid/correct for "strictly greater than this version" (although
">=", greater than or equal, is more common). apt is representing this as
">" in its log messages, following normal mathematical notation rather
than dpkg syntax.
If a dependency of the form "package (> version)" appears in dpkg package
metadata, it is often incorrect, because for historical reasons that is
interpreted as "greater than or equal", contrary to normal mathematical
notation. That's why ">>" exists, and also why package relationships of
the form "(> version)" or "(< version)" in dpkg metadata are deprecated
and discouraged.
smcv
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