"Eduard Bloch" <edi@gmx.de> wrote in message [🔎] 20051006091405.GA18546@debian">news:[🔎] 20051006091405.GA18546@debian...
Very good point, however one slight problem: if the package needs to be installed as a dependency of itself directly or indirectly then there is a circular dependecy which as we know is a bad thing. In fact I'm a little surprised that dependencies are not treated like predepends are, as that would prevent circular dependencies. As they are a bad thing, such a system seems like a good idea.would it not be simpler to have have apt just ask dpkg what thedependencies of the passed .deb are and then install the dependencies (andtheir dependecies) and then just pass the deb directly to dpkg?Hehe, it was my first thought about a possible solution, howerver: You also need the Conflicts string. And while the dependencies/conflicts are beeing installed, there may appear a constellation where the new package must be installed during the upgrade. And how would resolve that situation then?
I do however ack the potential for problems with 'conflicts', although I'm not sure that that is really a big deal, as installing the dependencies by hand, and then dpkg -i would also have the conflicts situation.