Re: Etch dependency failures

[David Jarvie <lists@astrojar.org.uk>]

On Saturday 18 February 2006 16:21, Kevin Mark wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 18, 2006 at 10:23:18AM +0000, David Jarvie wrote:
> > I'm running Etch. For a few weeks now, whenever I do my regular (more
> > than once a week) 'aptitude dist-upgrade', I get messages about unmet
> > dependencies. The original ones were about libpaper1 and libpaper-utils,
> > but in the last week or so more have started appearing each time. I'm
> > surprised that these haven't been fixed quickly. Does anybody know what
> > is the reason for these errors?
> >
> > The following packages have unmet dependencies:
> >   libpaperg: Depends: libpaper1 (= 1.1.14-3) but 1.1.14-5 is to be
> > installed. Depends: libpaper-utils (= 1.1.14-3) but 1.1.14-5 is to be
> > installed.
> >   python2.3-glade2: Depends: python2.3-gtk2 (= 2.6.3-2) but 2.8.2-3 is
> > installed.
> >   dbus-glib-1: Depends: dbus-1 (>= 0.23.4) but it is not installable
> >   libhal0: Depends: dbus-1 (>= 0.23.4) but it is not installable
> >   libhal-storage0: Depends: dbus-1 (>= 0.23.4) but it is not installable
> >   dbus-qt-1-dev: Depends: dbus-qt-1c2 (= 0.23.4-8) but it is not
> > installable Depends: dbus-1-dev (= 0.23.4-8) but it is not installable
>
> Hi David,
> the developent cycle begins with bug reports with bug fixes or new upstream
> versions. When those happen, a new version is created and its upload to
> unstable/sid. If this version is not found to be buddy, after about 10
> days, it will get moved to testing/etch by 'britney'. So, things do not
> get fixed 'quickly'. The thing about testing is that things can be added
> and removed depending upon available depenpencies which leads to the
> situation above. The name 'testing' is actaully the workshop of 'Debian'
> as its where the next stable is born. -Kev

I know that 'testing' isn't guaranteed to be as bug-free as stable. I was just 
under the impression that dependencies were things that you never have to 
worry about at all using Debian, whether you're using stable, testing or 
unstable. These are the first such errors I can remember in over a year using 
Debian testing, so I was a bit surprised when they didn't go away. Anyway, 
thanks to Patrick's suggestion, I've managed to resolve them now.

Regardless of these small problems, I'm still a big fan of Debian's dependency 
handling and of how upgrades are handled (particularly the fact that it 
doesn't overwrite manually edited config files without asking first).
-- 
David Jarvie.