Re: Aptitude best to ignore a dependency
Hi Kevin,
your question is better suited for one of the various support channels.
Including but not limited to the debian-user@lists.debian.org mailinglists,
which are even available in different languages.
Some quick answers anyway:
On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 11:42 PM, Kevin Chadwick <ma1l1ists@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Does this work and is aptitude the best way to update whilst ignoring
> incorrect or even debatable dependencies or can apt-get do so too.
The best way is to not choose this way. Or any other way suggested in
this superuser thread. Packages usually have dependencies for a reason,
not just because the maintainer is bored and wants users to waste diskspace,
so ignoring them temporary is really bad, but in extreme cases might be
necessary (hence, dpkg has a force option for it).
Trying to ignore it for longer is a good way into misery and nobody
will be able to help you (expect with a suggestion to reinstall system).
So APT isn't even trying to offer an option
(and I somehow doubt aptitude will do what you "expect").
> Is equiv a fast and easy solution?
Its "fast and easy", I am not so sure about the "solution" part.
> Currently I am getting fix broken on steam-launcher which wants
> jockey-common -> polkit
I heard that someone created a debian package (out of the ubuntu package)
for steam, but I am not really interested enough to remember details, sorry.
Most if not all of this stuff steam depends on should be available in debian,
too, it will "just" have a different package name, so you really want to find
out the names, not just fake the existence with equiv – steam will still
require whatever the dependency provides, so it needs it installed and
not just a fake package without content.
> Also shouldn't security updates for existing packages update in any
> case. What if something broke and the user didn't notice (background
> task)?
APT goes from one consistent system state to another. If your system ever
reaches an inconsistent state you will usually have bigger problems than
a pending security update as your system might not even boot anymore.
Needless to mention that a background task can't just break your system,
the user has to take some form of action to do it (like kill dpkg/APT while
running, power outage, …)
So you really want to fix this situation and reach a consistent state,
from there you can easily install pending updates again.
Best regards
David Kalnischkies
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