Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on February 13, 2007 04:19 PM
Oooooh, I know what you're talking about!! Manually installing packages and keeping the Debian package manager happy is a total nightmare, especially if you have a couple of libraries or applications compiled yourself!
The problem is first that APT thinks it is shifter than it actually is. It always wants to remove half of all installed packages just because one Debian pseudo dependency isn't matched - this even though the "broken" package works perfectly fine. The real problem here however is, that compile time sub version numbers are treated as holy wisdom. In reality a "libc-2.3.0.so" works fine, even though the dependency says "libc-2.3.6-22-dfsg2.90". DPKG and APT just can't know that. Allthough general Linux project version and GNU release incompatibilites are to blame here, the idiosyncrasy of Debians packaging policies and overall lack of cross-distribution compatibility/agreements stall the plattform.
Debian should overcome its "clean-dependency" approach. Because package-version dependencies don't hold up to reality. And a little package naming or splitting standardization with other distros wouldn't hurt too.
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tried that too
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on February 13, 2007 04:19 PMThe problem is first that APT thinks it is shifter than it actually is. It always wants to remove half of all installed packages just because one Debian pseudo dependency isn't matched - this even though the "broken" package works perfectly fine.
The real problem here however is, that compile time sub version numbers are treated as holy wisdom. In reality a "libc-2.3.0.so" works fine, even though the dependency says "libc-2.3.6-22-dfsg2.90". DPKG and APT just can't know that. Allthough general Linux project version and GNU release incompatibilites are to blame here, the idiosyncrasy of Debians packaging policies and overall lack of cross-distribution compatibility/agreements stall the plattform.
Debian should overcome its "clean-dependency" approach. Because package-version dependencies don't hold up to reality. And a little package naming or splitting standardization with other distros wouldn't hurt too.
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