Re: "Defaults for satisfying dependencies - ordering" gone?

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

>> Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes:

 > And the dependencies a package thus declared would thus depend on the
 > build environment even more than they already do.

 For the cases that concern this list I think an agreement on
 'Build-Depends: ..., xlibmesa3-dev | libgl-dev' would do the trick.
 I put the '| libgl-dev' bit there because I dislike the idea of
 Build-Depends being something that concerns only the autobuilders.
 apt-get's manpage says regarding build-dep "Right now virtual package
 build depends choose a package at random."  I guess this 'at random' is
 driven by the same criteria Jason explain earlier on this thread.

 > Maybe that isn't a big deal, but it feels wrong to me.

 Agreed.

 Regarding apt's way of picking a package when there's no default, there
 are some pathological cases:

 Provides: editor
     Package: vim
     Priority: optional

     Package: vim-perl
     Priority: optional

     Package: vim-python
     Priority: optional

     Package: vim-tcl
     Priority: optional

     Package: vim-gtk
     Priority: optional

     Package: jed
     Priority: optional

     Package: nano
     Priority: optional

     Package: xjed
     Priority: optional

     Package: elvis
     Priority: optional

     Package: vim-tiny
     Priority: optional

     Package: efuns
     Priority: optional

     Package: nano-tiny
     Priority: optional

     Package: yadex
     Priority: optional

 Provides: postscript-viewer
     Package: ghostview
     Priority: optional

     Package: kghostview
     Priority: optional

     Package: gnome-gv
     Priority: optional

     Package: gs-aladdin
     Priority: optional

     Package: gs
     Priority: optional

     Package: gv
     Priority: optional

 Provides: lg-issue
     [I won't list this here]

 mail-reader, news-reader, www-browser and info-browser are also
 interesting.  These would pull emacs20 according to the criteria.
 Perhaps more interesting is the fact that emacs20 doesn't provide
 'editor' (yes, I know why... all the previously mentioned 'editor'
 providing packages should have serious bugs filled against them).

 And this one made me smile:

 Package: sendmail
 Recommends: mail-reader, perl | perl

 But anyways, apt's criteria seem to work ok for (most of) the official
 virtual packages, and shouldn't be an issue for the virtual packages
 used privately.

-- 
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