Re: .deb dependancy hell

[Gregory Seidman <gss+debian@cs.brown.edu>]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 10:56:24AM -0500, Richard Hoskins wrote:
} On unstable, i386.
} 
} Kind of reminds me of RPM:
} 
}    rich@lajoie:~$ sudo dpkg -r libgphoto2-2
}    dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of libgphoto2-2:
}     libgphoto2-port0 depends on libgphoto2-2.
}    dpkg: error processing libgphoto2-2 (--remove):
}     dependency problems - not removing
}    Errors were encountered while processing:
}     libgphoto2-2
} 
}    rich@lajoie:~$ sudo dpkg -r libgphoto2-port0
}    dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of libgphoto2-port0:
}     libgphoto2-2 depends on libgphoto2-port0 (>= 2.1.4-1).
}    dpkg: error processing libgphoto2-port0 (--remove):
}     dependency problems - not removing
}    Errors were encountered while processing:
}     libgphoto2-port0

If you use the wrong tools, you will get the wrong results. In fact,
dpkg and rpm (the programs themselves) are at very similar levels of
abstraction. What you want is the next higher level of abstraction,
which is apt (incidentally, apt is now available for RPM; what makes
Debian's package management better is the strong policy on naming and
the numerous developers contributing packages which follow that policy).
You want:

apt-get remove libgphoto2-2

This will show you everything else that needs to be removed, and ask you
to confirm.

--Greg