Re: Getting the hang of APT....
On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 11:54:39PM +0200, Maurits van Rees wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 01:05:56PM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 11:00:31AM -0700, Redefined Horizons wrote:
> > > I want to install package "X", does the "X" .deb contain the
> > > dependency information, or is there a list on my system somewhere? If
> >
> > Yes.
>
> What do you mean? Yes, the X.deb contains the info? Or yes, there is a
> list? Or both?
>
The information is also available in the ...Packages file which is
downloaded every time you do aptitude update . But, I believe the
package contents is authoritative. That is ...Packages is generated
by a scan over the actual debs, as generated and uploaded by the
maintainers. I also believe that the dependency data is generated by
the maintainer and hand entered at some stage in the deb creation
process.
> I think it is actually both. You don't have to download a package in
> order to know what its dependencies are, so this info must be on some
> list. I assume that is the Packages.gz file that you download when you
> do an (apt-get|aptitude) update. But the dependencies for package X
> are also listed in X.deb.
>
> What happens if something goes wrong and there is a conflict between
> the info in the list and in X.deb. For example, I did some very minor
> tweaking to zope-mysqlda. According to the list this package depends
> on zope. According to my zope-mysqlda.deb it depends on zope2.7. On my
> home computer apt-get dist-upgrade doesn't complain. On a server I
> administer with the same setup regarding to these packages it wants to
> install zope. I know my tweaking should be done better, but what would
> be considered the authorative source regarding to this dependency? The
> list? Or the actual zope-mysqlda package? I think the package. Any
> thoughts?
>
I don't quite understand the nature of your tweaking, but I can say that
certainly you should not rely on any answer that I might give. In order
to make sure that you do so, I will not give an answer. (Hey, I have no
idea what might be going on. Work it out, and if the solution involves
discovering a bug in apt, report it.)
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
Reply to: