Re: dselect BUGS
On Fri, Aug 23, 2002 at 04:55:26PM +0930, Tom Cook wrote:
> On 0, Aurelio Turco <a.turco@bom.gov.au> wrote:
> > In regards to the "Recommends:" part, the meaning may be simply
> > that, unlike apt-get, dselect brings-in "recommended" packages by
> > default. But this is hardly a bug (if not actually the better action
> > in most cases), i would have thought.
>
> dselect treats Recommends: identically to Requires:, which is
> significantly different from just bringing in recommended packages by
> default; if you are using dselect then you *must* install the
> recommended packages. Otherwise dselect will consistantly bombard you
> with dependency problems until you give up and just use apt.
Yes, this has been fixed in dselect 1.10. Now Recommends: are presented
to you once (like Suggests:, except that the default is to install them)
and if you override them then dselect leaves you alone.
> As for not understanding Replaces:, I am not sure exactly what is
> meant by it, but it sounds like you can have two packages providing
> the same functionality without dselect complaining - even if they
> contain files with the same path/name. The default should be that
> dselect will uninstall the replaced packages when you select the
> replacing packages.
I don't think it's that simple. Replaces: just means that package A
contains some files which used to be in package B. This should not cause
package B to be removed, and dselect doesn't really need to be aware of
it at all. In conjunction with Conflicts:, though, it is supposed to
mean roughly what you say - but in that case dselect will remove the
conflicted-with package anyway, so I'm not sure what else it can do.
Maybe it should be used as a hint about which alternative to pick for a
dependency when several are available.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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