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Bug#128868: debian-policy: Depends semantics unclear re circular depends



On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Peter Moulder wrote:

> Adam Heath voices what is I believe the natural reading of current
> policy, namely that Depends implies postinst ordering, and consequently
> that dependency cycles aren't allowed.
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2001/debian-devel-200112/msg01392.html

They are allowed, but frowned upon, because they complicate matters.

> Adam wrote some of dpkg's cycle-breaking code, so presumably his words here
> should be taken as his interpretation of policy rather than dpkg
> behaviour.
> This is evidence that current policy wording is giving developers false
> confidence that Depends is sufficient to ensure an ordering among postinst
> runs.

No, I didn't write it.  I only fixed one problem, and that was by brute force
debugging(assert/segfault was occuring, and I tweaked values until it was
fixed).  My fix for that particular problem was correct(another check was
needed), however, I misunderstood the issue, and removed the existing check
that was already there, instead of just adding a new one.





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