Re: Bug#502455: Circular dependency between perl and perl-modules
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 06:38:20PM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> clone 501866 -1
> reassign -1 perl-modules
> retitle -1 Circular dependency between perl and perl-modules
> thanks
>
> Le jeudi 16 octobre 2008 à 14:33 +0200, Raphael Hertzog a écrit :
> > Random note: A first step to enhance the situation could be to remove the circular dep
> > between perl and perl-modules. perl should depend on perl-modules and not
> > the opposite (a conflicts/breaks should forbid the upgrade of perl-modules alone).
> > That way the configuration and unpack order is less random. But that
> > doesn't change much for our problem.
>
> Actually, it may be enough to fix the problem. See #316403 for a very
> similar issue that was fixed by removing the circular dependency between
> libgconf2-4 and gconf.
Even with perl-modules conflicting on older versions of perl (or
perl-base for that matter), it's possible for the perl packages to
get out of sync the other way: if a newer perl-base is unpacked first,
it can't find the modules in perl or perl-modules.
As far as I understand, with or without circular dependencies the only
packages that are guaranteed to work from 'old-prerm upgrade' are the
Essential:yes ones and those that are Pre-Depended on by the new version
of the package. (Yes, the policy could be clearer about this).
See also #495359 and #482140.
> In all cases, it is a very bad idea to have a circular dependency in
> such a core package, and it may trigger similar issues in many cases.
> Since there is no real reason for perl-modules to depend on perl, please
> use Conflicts to ensure the versions are correct instead.
I'm not familiar with the origins of the circular dependency, but it's
been there since at least 2001 or so and was probably last touched
in 5.6.1-5. Changing it at this stage of the release cycle seems risky,
particularly as I don't think it would even solve the original problem.
(After Lenny, I suppose Breaks: would be useful for this.)
--
Niko Tyni ntyni@debian.org
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