Re: architecture-specific dependencies on virtual packages

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

David Kalnischkies wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 11:36 PM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I agree here.  If I understand correctly, you are saying that it would
>> be best if a dependency
>>
>>         Package: a
>>         Depends: phonon-backend
>>
>> should only be satisfied by a package from another architecture with
>>
>>         Package: b
>>         Provides: phonon-backend
>>
>> if package b also has Multi-Arch: foreign.
>
> Yeap, that is what I would expect and it is what APT currently does.
> This thread is a try to understand why dpkg does it differently.
> aka: Valid reasons or just a bug?

Sounds like just a bug.

[...]
>> most sensible to make this dependency only satisfiable by non-virtual
>> packages.
>
> I can't follow on that one as if you are referring to the example above
> we suddenly have no dependencies left which could be satisfied by virtuals.
> So you probably lost me somewhere.

Yes, you have lost me, too. :)

Let me try again.  I believe that a dependency like this:

	Depends: package-foo:i386

is referring to a specific, concrete, non-virtual package package-foo
and it doesn't make sense to allow this to be satisfied by virtual
packages.

I understand that neither dpkg nor apt works that way currently, but
that is what I think the right behavior would be.

We can talk about Conflicts later.  Let's get this part ironed out
first.

Thanks,
Jonathan