Re: A Frequently Reported Bug: "process_queue: Assertion `dependtry <= 4' failed." in dpkg

[Remco van de Meent <remco@debian.org>]

Richard Braakman wrote:
> > In the second case,
> >     the package which depends on the virtual package should list real
> >     packages as alternatives to the virtual package so that the loop no
> >     longer includes the virtual package.
> 
> Note you should do this anyway.  See packaging manual section 8.6:
> 
>      In the absence of other information `dselect' will offer a default
>      selection of the first named package in a list of alternatives.
> 
>      However, there is no way to specify the `order' of several packages
>      which all provide the same thing, when that thing is listed as a
>      dependency.
> 
>      Therefore a dependency on a virtual package should contain a concrete
>      package name as the first alternative, so that this is the default.

Hmmm, there are for example quite a lot of packages that depend on "perl5",
instead of "perl5, perl-5.005". I guess a lot of fixing has to be done :)


 -Remco