libc6 dep problems with apt, how to resolve

[Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>]

Well, apt is having issues, and admittedly it should, with the current
libc6 dependencies.

The old libnss-db module is not in glibc proper anymore. However, ppl have
come to expect it as a default. So I made libc6 dep on it. However,
libnss-db also depends on libdb2, which in turn depends on libc6. It is
this cycle that is causing the problems.

Now, one solution was to put the nss-db tarball with glibc's build. Two
problems with this:

1) It creates a bad build-dep for glibc on libdb2-dev. I don't like this,
   especially for people porting Debian to other archs.
2) It needs to ensure that nss-db gets linked with the new libc6 that just
   got built. This is easy, and could have some unforseen problems I don't
   want to get involved with.

So, now my only solution left is to make libnss-db Essential: yes. Since
it isn't really a library (only a module that gets dlopen'd) I don't see a
problem, but I want others opinions, and perhaps maybe a better solution
No wild ideas that require changing the package manager, or the archive
setup, or depend on specific package manager frontends please. I want real
working solutions that can be implemented now.

Ben

-- 
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