Re: Bug#892562: qutebrowser has circular Depends on qutebrowser-qtwebengine|qutebrowser-qtwebkit
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Hi Bill,
Bill Allombert wrote:
> There is a circular dependency between qutebrowser and
> qutebrowser-qtwebengine|qutebrowser-qtwebkit:
Yes, I'm aware of that.
Otherwise we would need two additional binary packages (with nearly
the same names as the existing ones) where one set would be meta
packages, pulling in the relevant dependencies and the other set would
be meta packages pulling in qutebrowser and the according dependency
package, e.g.
qutebrowser-qtwebengine → qutebrowser, qutebrowser-qtwebengine-dependencies
qutebrowser-qtwebkit → qutebrowser, qutebrowser-qtwebkit-dependencies
qutebrowser → qutebrowser-qtwebengine-dependencies | qutebrowser-qtwebkit-dependencies
Additionally, qutebrowser-qtwebkit-dependencies and
qutebrowser-qtwebengine-dependencies would at least need a "Suggests:
qutebrowser" if not a "Recommends: qutebrowser" as they're not useful
at all without an installed qutebrowser package (but cause no harm
without it).
> Circular dependencies are known to cause problems during upgrade
> between stable releases, so we should try to avoid them.
And FTP masters say we should try to avoid additional binary packages
unless necessary. (The two new ones are necessary because otherwise
dependencies of the type "(a & b) | (c & d)" cannot be expressed,
i.e. previously the dependencies in the qutebrowser package were
either too weak or too strong.)
> See threads
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg02111.html
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/11/msg01101.html
I'm sorry, but I doubt that a discussion from more than a decade ago
reflects today's dependency resolver implementations and capabilities
of apt and aptitude. Cc'ing the apt developers for their input on
this. (No need to Cc the aptitude developers. I am one of them and I
can't remember circular dependencies being an issue for aptitude's
dependency resolver.)
So if either the apt developers consider such circular dependencies
still a severe enough issue today, or if anyone provides a current
real world example(*) where this circular dependency causes a
dependency resolver problem in either apt or aptitude (and given that
the FTP Masters will accept two additional empty meta packages as
outlined above), I will consider this request. Otherwise it will be a
"wontfix" for me.
At least so far piuparts found no such issues when these dependencies had
been introduced:
https://piuparts.debian.org/testing2sid/source/q/qutebrowser.html
Nor did
https://qa.debian.org/debcheck.php?dist=unstable&package=qutebrowser
report any problem besides qtwebengine not being available on all
architectures.
(*) Will be difficult to cause problems with buster to stretch updates
since qutebrowser is not in stretch, so there can't be any upgrade
issues from stretch to buster.
Regards, Axel
--
,''`. | Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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