Bug#38288: dpkg: Assertion: `dependtry <= 4` failed

[Buddha Buck <bmbuck@acsu.buffalo.edu>]

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.4.1.1

I usually update my system to the current potato on a nightly basis, but
was unable to do so for the past couple of days.  So today, after 
downloading 35 MB of updated packages, I was able to install and
configure all but 4 -- then I got the error listed in the subject
(on line ../../../main/packages.c:191 process_queue).

If it helps, the four packages that are not configured are
cmucl, cmuck-clx, cmucl-hemlock, and cmucl-safe.  I do note that
there is a dependency cycle among those four packages:

cmucl depends on lisp-core
cmucl-safe depends on cmucl
           provides lisp-core

The other two depend on cmucl.

-- System Information
Debian Release: potato
Kernel Version: Linux resnet217-203.resnet.buffalo.edu 2.2.7 #1 Sun May 16 00:02:19 EDT 1999 i586 unknown

Versions of the packages dpkg depends on:
ii  libc6           2.1.1-7        GNU C Library: Shared libraries and timezone
ii  libncurses4     4.2-3.2        Shared libraries for terminal handling
ii  libstdc++2.9    2.91.61-1      The GNU stdc++ library (egcs version)