Re: Seeking for advice: Circular Build Dependencies.

[David Kalnischkies <kalnischkies@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 15:26, Reinhard Tartler <siretart@debian.org> wrote:
> In my tests, it *seems* that apt indeed prefers a real package over a
> virtual package. I'm aware of the following drawbacks:

It does, but you are better of handling this as an internal detail
- because it is easier/faster to try non-virtual paths first -
instead of a well-defined feature.
Other implementations might do it completely different…
(the "old" sbuild solver or apt utilizing an external solver aka EDSP, …)

And complains to change this behavior exist ( but i guess it's unlikely).
(Think of upgrades: usually the provider of foo is the newer/better package
 than compared to the real package foo)

Also, and that might be the biggest problem, you would be never allowed
to have a versioned dependency on libfoo-dev as policy says that
the behavior will be undefined otherwise.


For the problem itself I have no knowledge, so just two questions:
Aren't compilers in the same "chicken or egg" dilemma?
And how will new abi/api versions handled? I assume foo2 will not build
against bar1 and vice versa so you need to bootstrap again…


Best regards

David Kalnischkies