Re: Status of circulars dependencies in unstable

[Bill Allombert <Bill.Allombert@math.u-bordeaux1.fr>]

> Le samedi 03 septembre 2011 à 11:54 +0200, Bill Allombert a écrit : 
> > Today circular dependencies in unstable reached an all-time low, with
> > only 40 circular dependencies.
> 
> I think it should now be clear that there aren’t any such issues that
> cannot be fixed, with more or less complication.
> 
> Given the benefits for dependency resolvers to be able to guarantee the
> dependency tree is actually a tree and not a DAG, isn’t it time to start
> mandating this in the policy? I also wonder whether it would be possible
> to check for these circular dependencies in britney (if it’s relevant).

As a start, what I suggest is to handle circular depends the same way as Pre-Depends:

     You should not specify a `Pre-Depends' entry for a package before this
     has been discussed on the `debian-devel' mailing list and a consensus
     about doing that has been reached.

i.e to require a consensus on debian-devel.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.