Conditional Depenency Idea
Ian,
We occasionally run into situations where one package conflicts with
older versions of another package, but does not conflict with newer
versions nor does it directly depend on the other package. I think
this is what you may have called reverse dependencies or was it
reverse conflicts. Whatever we call them, they are problematic for
dselect because it is not always apparent what dselect can or should
do about them. I had an idea last night which might help solve this
problem.
What if we added a conditional dependency that behaved like a normal
dependency (or possibly pre-dependency or both) but only if the other
package was installed. If the other package wasn't installed, the
conditional dependency would be ignored. Also, it isn't obvious, but
dpkg/dselect should ensure that conditional dependencies remain
satisfied if the other package is ever installed.
This new feature could even help us with the --force-overwrite oroblem
we've run into. For example, the package which really should contain
the duplicated file could conditionally depend on the fixed version of
the other package.
David
--
David Engel Optical Data Systems, Inc.
david@ods.com 1101 E. Arapaho Road
(214) 234-6400 Richardson, TX 75081
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