Re: meaning & behaviour of "Replaces" in debs
On 2008-07-29 11:57 +0200, j.j.fishbat@gmail.com wrote:
> On my debian/testing machine I have a 3rd party package
> gerris-snapshot (the debian gerris package is very old).
> And ...
>
> > apt-cache show libgsl0-dev
>
> Package: libgsl0-dev
> :
> Version: 1.11-2
> :
> Depends: libgsl0ldbl (= 1.11-2)
>
> > apt-cache show libgsl0ldbl
>
> Version: 1.11-2
> Replaces: gsl, libgsl0 (<= 1.9-4)
> :
> Conflicts: gsl, libgsl0
See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477732 for the
reasons why this "Conflicts" is necessary.
> > apt-cache show gerris-snapshot
>
> Package: gerris-snapshot
> Version: 1.2.0-080705
> Depends: libc6-dev | libc-dev, libgts-snapshot-dev (>= 0.7.6),
> pkg-config, gcc, sed, gawk, m4, proj, libnetcdf3, libgsl0
This seems strange. Why should it depend on sed, which is an essential
package? And why does it not have versioned dependencies on the last
two libraries?
> so that if I want to use the GSL development library
>
> > sudo apt-get install libgsl0-dev libgsl0ldbl
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> The following packages will be REMOVED
> gerris-snapshot gfsview-snapshot libgsl0 vfplot
> The following NEW packages will be installed
>
> The author of the package is prepared to replace its dependancies
> by
>
> Depends: libc6-dev | libc-dev, libgts-snapshot-dev (>= 0.7.6),
> pkg-config, gcc, sed, gawk, m4, proj, libnetcdf3, libgsl0 |
> libgsl0ldbl
He's obviously not using normal Debian tools to build his package.
BTW, libnetcdf3 is not available in testing either.
> but queries why this should be necessary -- if libgsl0ldbl
> replaces libgsl0 then shouldn't the package libgsl0ldbl suffice to
> satisfy gerris-snapshot's dependancy on libgsl0?
In general, no. But it may work in this case, as libgs0dbl seems to be
compatible with libgs0 on some architectures, including i386.
> If not, would I be foolish to ask for this as a feature request?
Ask whom for what?
Sven
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