On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:27:00PM +0200, Peter Pentchev wrote: > Hi, and apologies in advance if this is a stupid question or if it has > already been discussed :) > > Is it possible that this should lead to problems with further levels of > package dependencies? E.g. something like that for two packages: > > foo/control: > Depends: bar-dev, libdb-dev | libdb4.7-dev > > bar-dev/control: > Depends: libdb4.7-dev > > I realize that this is a somewhat contrived case, but still... wouldn't > it break, or would that be considered a bug in the packages' > dependencies?
If only the first alternative is considered, it will break. apt-get will not be able to install libdb-dev and libdb4.7-dev in parallel, and so the build will be terminated due to unsatisfiable build dependencies. This isn't at all contrived; I saw many real examples of this when doing the whole-archive rebuild, though thankfully actual breakage was extremely rare/nonexistent. If alternatives are allowed, it will work out that libdb4.7-dev only is acceptable and install just that. > If the latter, well, wouldn't this leave the maintainer > of foo a bit vulnerable against random decisions by the maintainers of > bar-dev? Very much so. This is why library transitions need coordination, since they have distribution-wide impact. This is also a good example of why we should aim to only have one major version of each library in use at one time. Regards, Roger -- .''`. Roger Leigh : :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/ `. `' Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ `- GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848 Please GPG sign your mail.
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