On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 10:15:58PM -0500, Joey Hess wrote: > These are all necessary, and debconf is an essential package which is > not subject to the circular dependency postinst ordering problems afaik. > [...] > The bug report for these does not give any concrete reasons why a > circular dependency is a problem in this particular case.
every circular dependency is a problem: the apt-dpkg-combo blows up as soon as apt splits the to-be-configured list for dpkg between the elements of a circular dependency. this happens, if apt is processing many packages at the same time, e.g. when run from an automatic installer like FAI (whose install_packages script has been equipped with a only-feed-N-packages-at-the-same-time-into-apt workarouns) or when doing a dist-upgrade between two debian releases on a machine with 'many' packages installed. conclusion: we have two possibilities a) explicitely forbid circular dependencies in policy b) explicitely allow them and enhance APT. a long time ago, O(2years), I wrote a hack to let apt and dpkg communicate via a pipe using dpkg's command-fd option; it was rejected at that time because the apt maintainers wanted to switch to a kind of libdpkg. Any news on this solution? -- c u henning
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