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Dependencies



On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, Britton wrote:

> I'm sorry to be dogmatic, but I'm going to say one more time that I like
> things the way they are.  If something depends on seperately maintained
> library xyz it is not good but *GREAT* to know about it from the start. 
> The dependency structure sends this message to users load and clear, in a
> way that a lumped package scheme would not even if a full description of
> all dependencies were given when such a package was installed.  I really
> had no clue about the high level of software interdependence when I
> started with slackware, and it hurt me continually.  I think a little pain
> with dselect in the beginning would have saved me a lot of grief later.

I agree that an understanding of the dependency structure is very
important and helpful in avoiding future problems as the result of
mistakes in package maintenance. One thing that I would like to see added
to the dpkg program is an option to display the packages that are
necessary (and which ones are uninstalled) to configure a particular new
package. As I do not use dselect or dftp, this would be very timesaving to
me. For example, rather than using the trial-and-error approach, I could
do the following:

$ dpkg --list-depends blah_1.0-1.deb

Installed dependencies:
blah-base
ncurses

Required dependencies:
blah-lib

Conflicts:
none

Or something to that effect. Any thoughts?

Dave



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