Re: Getting rid of circular dependencies
On Fri, Jun 24, 2005 at 11:36:16AM -0500, Peter Samuelson wrote:
>
> [Petri Latvala]
> > It is an abuse of the Depends field. foo-data doesn't *need* foo for
> > its own operations. Nothing in -data fails to execute without foo
> > (because there's just data, nothing to execute).
>
> Depends does not just mean "executables will crash or fail to load".
> It actually means "it is pointless to install this package without this
> other package". Having a package removed automatically because it no
> longer has any reason to be installed is a perfectly legitimate use for
> "Depends".
No it is not. Read Debian Policy 7.2:
`Depends'
This declares an absolute dependency. A package will not be
configured unless all of the packages listed in its `Depends'
field have been correctly configured.
The `Depends' field should be used if the depended-on package is
required for the depending package to provide a significant
amount of functionality.
The `Depends' field should also be used if the `postinst',
`prerm' or `postrm' scripts require the package to be present in
order to run. Note, however, that the `postrm' cannot rely on
any non-essential packages to be present during the `purge'
phase.
If you want to remove useless package, use aptitude debfoster or
deborphan. dpkg will _never_ do it for you. apt-get will try to do it
but at the expense of considerable breakage risk. Bug #310490 show
an example where the risk is to remove every KDE packages.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
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