Dependency problems and conjectures

[Yoav Cohen-Sivan <yoavcs@netvision.net.il>]

It seems to me we've got a problem with the way dependencies and the
installation are handled. It seems that if package 1 is dependent on
packages 2,3 and 4, and all were selected for installation, then
dselect  doesn't always install 2,3 and 4 before 1. More usually it
installs 2, then tries 1 and you get a dependency error - the
post-install script of 1 exits with an error. Go through the
installation again and it'll install 3, then 1 and again dependency
problems. Go through the installation a final time, you get 4 installed,
and everything is spiffy.

 I say this since I have had constant problems installing many packages,
especially the X11 and TeX distributions, both on Debian 1.1 and 1.2. In
all cases I got numerous dependency errors and various post-install
scripts returning with errors since some packages that the main one
depended on hadn't yet been installed even though I had selected them
for installation. Only after going through the Install step of dselect
4-5 times were all packages installed and then the main one would work
as expected.

 I find it hard to believe it is only me since this has happened with
both 1.1 and 1.2 and I am not trying to do anything fancy, just the
basic install + 1 or 2 additional stuff. Still, I haven't seen anyone
else complain so maybe I am just missing something simple.

 Anyway, if anyone of the developers wants I can go through the install
again and write down the numerous error messages and send them to him. 
 Again, the problems I just had were with the X11 distribution,
especially xserver-vga16 and xserver-s3 not being installed before other
packages that depended on them were, causing an avalanche of packages
not being installed that were dependent on the ones dependent on
xserver... The same thing regarding TeX, especially psnfss, texbin and
latex. Perl also caused a few headaches.

	Thanks for reading,
	Yoav


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