Re: A new way to specify versionned dependencies may be needed

[Nicolas Boullis <nboullis@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 07, 2003 at 05:03:19AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 04, 2003 at 01:46:08AM +0200, Nicolas Boullis wrote:
> > Moreover, that does not answer to my real question: is there a good 
> > reason not to implement such an extended syntax for versionned 
> > relationships. 
> 
> Probably not; but there needs to be a good reason to do it. It has to
> be implemented in dpkg, apt, testing, and everything else that worries
> about conflicts, and to ensure upgrades work okay, can't be used for
> a release after it's rolled out (so, assuming a release once a year,
> not until early 2006). Do you care enough?

I perfectly know that such a thing can't be available before sarge+1 at 
best. But AFAICS, such a thing would also be useful for "positive 
relationship" (depends, recommends, suggest).

People currently specify things as "Depends: foo (>= 1.0.0-1), foo (< 
1.0.1)". But that will break if more than one version of foo can coexist 
at a time. That's currently impossible, but that may become possible 
when versionned provides are available (if they ever become available).
That is if foo-bar 0.9.9-1 "Provides: foo (= 0.9.9-1)" and foo-baz 
1.0.1-1 "Provides: foo (= 1.0.1-1)", then having both would (wrongly) 
satisfy the "Depends: foo (>= 1.0.0-1), foo (< 1.0.1)" condition.

Did I miss something obvious?


Regards,

Nicolas