On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 11:13:21PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: > On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 11:08:05PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote: > > Hello Steve, > > > I am concerned that the situation you mention is quite common and resolving > > it > > this way will lead to a marked increase in the number of circular > > dependencies > > in Debian. > > > Even in such situations, there are various ways to avoid the circular > > dependency. > > > The first way: odbcinst1debian1 shlib could look like: > > libodbcinst 1 odbcinst1debian1,odbcinst > > This way every package linked against odbcinst1debian1 would also depend > > on odbcinst, alleviating the need for odbcinst1debian1 itself to depend > > on odbcinst. > > Doesn't actually work now that unixodbc is using .symbols files instead. > I'm not sure if there is a syntax that can be used to achieve this with > .symbols; I'd be willing to look at this option if it can be done, but it
Well, the manpage document a field Build-Depends-Package, but I am not been able to make anything of the explanation either in English or in the French translation. > also requires rebuilds of all the reverse-dependencies to ensure odbcinst > gets pulled in, so the odbcinst dep would have to remain on a transitional > basis for upgrades. I agree this is annoying. > > The second way: Add a new package odbcinst-config that contains the > > configuration files and set up the dependencies as follow: > > odbcinst -> odbcinst1debian1 -> odbcinst-config > > I don't think I can come up with anything better... and I don't think those > ways are good enough. I'm particularly not going to create a separate > package just for the config files, I already feel bad about having to split > odbcinst into its own package. Circular dependencies aren't bugs - policy > doesn't prohibit them (it actually describes how they're handled), dpkg > knows what to do with them, and these packages will install correctly since > only one of them has a postinst. So while circular dependencies aren't > really desirable, I think they're the least evil in this case. odbcinst is not an isolated instance. The multiarch proposal will lead to a lot of circular-dependency if we do not actively fight them, they will get intertwined and then apt will be unable to find a suitable upgrade-path for squeeze. Cheers, -- Bill. <[email protected]> Imagine a large red swirl here. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
