Re: Ideas

["J.A. Bezemer" <costar@panic.et.tudelft.nl>]

On Sun, 27 Jun 1999, Enrique Zanardi wrote:

> [...]
> 
> IMHO, dpkg-multicd has many other problems. It doesn't do package
> ordering, it doesn't handle predependencies (trying to install netscape
> in a new installation is a show-stopper. As it pre-depends on dpkg-awk,
> installation doesn't work, and it leaves the /var/lib/dpkg/status
> database in an unusable state. One has to manually edit it to be able to
> make another install run in dselect. Not for the average user)...

I already reported this problem of dpkg-multicd; should be fixed in unstable. 
And netscape was the only package with pre-deps to a package not in the base
system. Was, because that should be solved already (according to the
netscape maintainer). So there shouldn't be any pre-dep problems any more. 

This pre-deps problem is really a `feature' of dpkg. All methods (except apt)
use `dpkg --predep-package' to get one `pre-depended' package at a time to
install before the regular install of other packages. And dpkg does follow
pre-deps of pre-deps, but not `normal' deps of pre-deps. This way, sometimes a
pre-depended package can't be installed (i.e. set up) because its `normal'
deps are not met. Then the whole install process just halts with an error.

But then, dpkg doesn't seem to be maintained any more. 462 bug reports for the
very core of the Debian distrubution, some over 3 years old. Tssk. 

Regards,
  Anne Bezemer