Bug#590511: Document significance of first-listed alternative in dependencies
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.9.1.0
Severity: wishlist
Policy currently doesn't directly document the default choice of the
first-listed alternative of a set of dependencies, which came up in
the discussion of Bug #587279. I believe Policy should state that,
if none of the alternative dependencies are currently installed, the
first listed alternative should be considered the default package to
install to resolve the dependency.
We probably have to be careful how we word this to provide wiggle room
for package managers who may prefer to install the dependency that
requires the fewest additional packages be installed (a heuristic that
will often do the right thing when the alternatives are for different
desktop environments, for instance).
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-686-bigmem (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
debian-policy depends on no packages.
debian-policy recommends no packages.
Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii doc-base 0.9.5 utilities to manage online documen
-- no debconf information
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