Re: Getting rid of circular dependencies, stage 5

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> writes:

> Andreas Barth <aba@not.so.argh.org> wrote:
>
>> * Frank Küster (frank@debian.org) [060726 14:49]:
>>> What about using Suggests instead of "Depends-for-being-useful"?
>>
>> Suggests is *way* weaker. 
>
> Sorry, I meant Recommends.
>
>> The Needs would trigger automatic installation
>> with any tool. Actually, if
>> A->B (depends), B->C(depends), and C->B(Needs), then A won't be
>> configured until both B and C are installed.
>
> That's a clever idea.  However, so far nobody has provided any
> information where this would be actually needed, except a general
> "people might install foo-data and wonder why no program foo is
> provided" or a "the knowing already know".  Is it really worth the
> effort? 
>
> Regards, Frank

Joey said debconf requires it circular dependency.

I hope everyone agrees that foo -> foo-data is required but foo-data
-> foo generaly isn't. Only reason for the reverse way generaly is to
force installation of foo when someone stupid install foo-data only
and purging of foo-data when foo is removed. If depends is the right
thing for fixing stupidiy or cleanup problems is another discussion so
lets ignore those cases.


MfG
        Goswin