On Sun, 10 Mar 2019 14:14:52 -0500,
Kent West<westk@acu.edu> wrote:
>Example: https://packages.debian.org/sid/python3-kivy
>
>-
>>
>> dep: python3 <https://packages.debian.org/sid/python3> (<< 3.7) dep:
>> python3 <https://packages.debian.org/sid/python3> (>= 3.5~)
>
>
>The ">=" surely means "greater than or equal to", but what is "<<"?
>"less than or less than"?
>
>Even more interesting is that "aptitude install python3-kivy" only
>shows one "<" (which makes sense to me as "less than"):
>
>The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>> python3-kivy : Depends: python3 (< 3.7) but 3.7.2-1 is installed
>>
>
>and in the description of the package in the aptitude console:
>
>Depends: python3-gst-1.0, python3 (< 3.7), python3 (>= 3.5~), ...
>>
>
>It's not a typo, unless other pages have similar typos (sometimes being
>">>" - "greater than or greater than"?).
>
>Also, is the answer documented somewhere? I've researched
>unproductively for several hours.
>
Hi!
It's documented in Debian policy:
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html
>The relations allowed are <<, <=, =, >= and >> for strictly earlier,
>earlier or equal, exactly equal, later or equal and strictly later,
>respectively.
>The relations < and > were previously allowed, but they were
>confusingly defined to mean earlier/later or equal rather than
>strictly earlier/later. dpkg still supports them with a warning, but
>they are no longer allowed by Debian Policy.
-- Andreas Rönnquist
mailinglists@gusnan.se
andreas@ronnquist.net
Thank you! That was driving me nuts!
So essentially, aptitude's "<" is out-dated, and should be "<<", to clearly mean "earlier than" and not "earlier than or equal to"?
--