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Re: Problems with Quake and Quake-lib



On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Joey Hess wrote:

> Dale Scheetz:
> > I just tried to install quake_1.01-2 and quake-lib_1.01-2 and ran into two
> > problems that I am not sure I can resolve. 
> > First: quake depends on libc5_5.4.17-1 which is not the 1.2 release libc5.
> > I am reticent to install this library. I am a package maintainer as well,
> > and am concerned that I should not build packages with this library or
> > they will not install on a 1.2 system. Is there some reason that quake
> > will not build with the 1.2 release libc5?
> 
> The dependency on 5.4.17-1 is there only because I am running a bo system,
> and that's the libc I have installed. It should work with any libc5,
> AFAIK. 
> 
> Since quake is in non-free, I guess I'd better make it useable for folks
> using debian 1.2, though, so I'll rebuild the package to just depend on
> libc5. Thanks for pointing this out.

Thanks, I'm sure that this will make many new 1.2 users very happy ;-)

> 
> > Also: quake depends on quake-lib, but quake-lib also depends on quake.
> > This circular dependency makes it difficult to install (I realise that I
> > can use --force-depends). Is there any reason why quake-lib should depend
> > on quake? I understand why quake depends on quake-lib, just not the other
> > direction.
> 
> I made quake-lib depend on quake because it's useless without quake. And
> quake won't work without quake-lib or quake-lib-stub. 
> 
The "won't work without" should be a depends, but "useless without" isn't
sufficient. Consider: libc5 could be considered useless without the
packages that use it being installed. Well, maybe that's too bizzar an
example, but think of the other libraries; none of them depend on the
programs that use them (even if only one program currently does so).
I would argue that the depends in quake-lib on quake is inappropriate
because one should never need to use --force-depends in such a
circumstance. 

> The circular dependancy seems easy enough to resolve in dselect, and if
> you're just using dpkg, you can, as you say, use --force-depends or just
> install both packages at once.
> 
> I'm cc'ing this to debian-devel because there has been some discussion of
> circular dependancies lately. I'd appreciate some feedback on this -- are
> circular dependencies discouraged where not absolutely neccessary? Are
> they A Bad Thing? What should I do?
> 
My feeling is that they are "A Bad Thing" and can be resolved by other
means. In the case of quake they are quite unnecessary to the proper
operation of the package.

Luck,

Dwarf

------------                                          --------------

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

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