Re: Dependencies between components.
Hi,
I have not found a mistake in your considerations about "sane"
component inter-dependency.
However, package dependencies are declared upon a package with a
suitable version, whether this package can be set-up on a bespoke
target system remains to be determined by APT when the package is
installed or upgraded. Just consider for example some manually held
packages - These might break your package install even if all the
needed packages are downloadable (All the components needed are
correctly configured in sources.list ).
I hope this helps. I'd like to understand why you are asking this
question, this might enable us to give you better-suited information.
Ciao,
Simon
P.S.: I am sorry for first sending this to Tim directly - I should
take extra care when using this weird web interface here.
On Sat, 30 Mar 2024 at 18:12, Tim Woodall <debianuser@woodall.me.uk> wrote:
>
> Is there a wiki or something else that lays out exactly what other
> distributions and components each debian (distribution,component) tuple
> is allowed to depend on?
>
> This is what I've concluded so far.
>
> I'm assuming transitive dependencies are allowed, e.g.
> bookworm-updates-contrib can depend on bookworm-non-free so I've
> considered the dependencies between distributions with the same
> component and the dependencies between components of the same
> distribution separately.
>
>
> First considering the distribution dependencies. All of these are
> always allowed between the same component.
>
> bookworm-proposed-updates : bookworm
> bookworm-updates : bookworm
> bookworm-backports-sloppy : bookworm-backports bookworm
> bookworm-backports : bookworm
>
> I believe that updates is a subset of proposed-updates so dependency
> on updates by proposed-updates is moot
>
> I'm unclear whether backports is allowed to depend on -updates but I
> assume not as I've not seen anything saying that you need to enable
> -updates if you enable -backports. I guess the backporter would have to
> wait for the point release if they ever needed something only in
> bookworm-updates (it's hard to imagine many cases where a -updates
> package would be required for backporting so this is somewhat
> theoretical - I think it's only if there's a security update involved)
>
>
> Now considering the dependencies between components in the same
> distribution:
>
> contrib : non-free non-free-firmware main
> non-free : non-free-firmware main
> non-free-firmware : main
>
> Some sources seem to say that non-free depends on contrib while others
> say contrib depends on non-free. My understanding on contrib is that it
> is for packages that cannot be in main because they depend on non-free
> even though they're otherwise free. But I'm not sure if there's a two
> way dependency here.
>
> I'm assuming that non-free-firmware cannot depend on non-free or contrib
> - that would seem to defeat the goal of non-free-firmware - although I
> could see a case where a firmware loader is in contrib while the
> firmware itself is in non-free so I'm not sure exactly what is allowed
> or expected here.
>
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