Hello, There exists a (necessary) circular dependency between kdelibs-bin and kdelibs4c2a. kdelibs-bin is linked to kdelibs4c2a. Also, every KDE application needs the binaries in kdelibs-bin to function properly (it contains very basic services without which a KDE application will be useless, if it starts at all). Yet hardly any packages depend on kdelibs-bin. So to break the circular dependency by removing kdelibs4c2a's dependency on kdelibs-bin would require that all KDE packages be re-uploaded with a kdelibs-bin dependency manually added. Not fun. And every KDE-using system would still need both kdelibs-bin and kdelibs4c2a, so the gain/pain ratio would be small. Instead, the KDE team proposes to simply merge kdelibs-bin into kdelibs4c2a. The general practice of separating libraries and programs makes no sense for kdelibs, given the close two-way ties between the two. Multiple versions of the KDE libraries can't be installed side-by-side. And this close relationship means that KDE was never a good candidate for multiarch anyway (only one copy of kdelibs-bin means KDE applications of only one architecture), so mixing programs and libs in one package won't cost anyone anything, in practice. But since this change will stretch policy, which prefers that libraries and programs be split, we'd like the blessing of the Release Team before committing ourselves. For the rare package which actually depends on kdelibs-bin, kdelibs4c2a will still "Provides: kdelibs-bin". So the 'transition' should be utterly painless, and require no work or changes by anyone (beyond the obvious kdelibs packaging changes). The removal of this circular dependency should, hopefully, make future transitions easier, avoiding difficulties such as those encountered by users during the Woody to Sarge upgrade. Post-Etch, KDE 4 will require a kdelibs transition, and this will be tied to a move from Qt3 to Qt4. Getting kdelibs' circular dependencies straightened out before Etch may help later on. This message follows a slightly more detailed discussion, starting here: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-kde-talk/2006-January/000446.html Please CC pkg-kde-talk@lists.alioth.debian.org on responses. Thanks, Christopher Martin
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