Re: testing packages not consistent?
pausmith@nortelnetworks.com wrote:
>But whenever I try to install it, it wants to remove some critical files
>from my system first!
>
> # apt-get install alsa-source
> Reading Package Lists... Done
> Building Dependency Tree... Done
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
> alien debhelper dh-make
Those aren't critical (not in the sense that the testing scripts
consider, anyway - they might be critical to *you*). As Anthony Towns
put it on -devel when this came up recently, 'testing just says
everything can be installed, not that everything you might want can be
installed /at once/'.
The current alsa-source really does need a newer debhelper to work
properly, though: see bug #98819. I assume it's a Recommends: so that
you're not forced to install debhelper to use other bits of the package.
>I thought the idea behind testing was that packages would only go into
>testing once all the packages that they needed were also in testing...
testing ignores the Recommends: (it's installable without it), and
resolves the Conflicts: by assuming that you can remove debhelper in
order to install the package. It's not optimal in this case, but is
necessary in others.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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