Re: Bug#61512: apt picks wrong packages trough dependencies
On Tue, 4 Apr 2000, Filip Van Raemdonck wrote:
> * that tells apt to install those four extra packages, two of which I am totally
> not interested in (the ggi/gii development packages).
It is due to the very complex relationships the exist in the gl packages,
glutg3-dev needs a libgl-dev which was not provided by the older mesa dev
package so APT searches for the first possible thing that can be
libgl-dev (mesa-ggi) and takes that.
Without further input that could entirely be a perfectly valid solution -
there is more than one route to take for this problem. Basically its
iterative algorithm gets stuck in a local minima of the dependency graph.
Regrettably it isn't actually possible to deal with all these degenerate
cases, there is a similar trouble with the mess that is perl. This is
pretty much due to cases where there are N possible choices [ggi, glide,
neither], different people will always want different things.
The trouble is compoundend by this odd use of provides - nobody has ever
made a large scale construct like this before - and furthermore it will
only happen because a new provides was introduced.
This isn't a bug because it does tell you want it wants to do and you are
free to give it a push in the right direction after. APT *does not*
promise it will always find the selection of packages you want, it just
frequently does.
I will look at it a little more after potato is released, this particular
case might be fixable, but there is always a big risk of having bad side
effects :<
dist-upgrade and friends should not have this problem btw.
Jason
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