Re: Getting rid of circular dependencies

[Thomas Hood <jdthood@aglu.demon.nl>]

Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> More usefull is probably a new type 'needs <foo> to run but can be
> configured without'. The effect would be just like Depends except
> that cycles can be safely broken at that point.

For symmetry you might want to call the dependency you describe
'Post-Depends'.

    X Pre-Depends: Y  = X unpack needs Y config'ed
    X Depends: Y      = X config needs Y config'ed
    X Post-Pepends: Y = X run    needs Y config'ed

To break a cyclical Dependency, one of the Depends in the cycle could
be weakened to a Post-Depends; then dpkg would know to configure the
Depended-upon package before configuring the other (merely
Post-Depended-upon) package.

I agree that mutual dependencies can be appropriate when two packages
work closely together.  An example is a program that consists of both
binaries and scripts which run one another in complex ways and the
scripts and data have been split off into a separate Arch: all package.

-- 
Thomas Hood