Bug#1059929: release.debian.org: gobject-introspection_1.78.1-9 is said to have an unsatisfiable dependency

[Paul Gevers]

Hi Simon

On 06-01-2024 12:48, Simon McVittie wrote:

On Sat, 06 Jan 2024 at 10:16:28 +0100, Paul Gevers wrote:
If an explicit dependency on steam-libs:i386 would be valid, I'd be happy
to use that, and remove the steam-libs-i386 binary package as redundant.

We're not there yet, so please hold your horses. Although I tend to think we should allow this too for the use cases you describe. So unless it's really the intent of a (source) package or small (source) package set to be meant to be used in a multi architecture environment I think we should demand that dependencies are not be exclusively fulfilled by packages from another architecture (:any is OK, :$arch is not). So indeed, each should require manual review. While writing this that *could* mean that britney2 grows support for cross-architecture dependencies while still blocking them if not forced.

packages being blocked for useful use cases (that we could hint
through, but that britney2 would consider non-installable, so not protected
from then on)

and ...

I think this bug report is one of only a couple over the years
that requested anything on this front

I specifically ment these sentences in the broader discussion we started having.

This bug #1059929 involving gobject-introspection_1.78.1-9 is different

from things like steam-installer and nss-mdns:

Ack. I consider that just a bug in britney2: if apt, dpkg and dose3 allow this, so should britney2. My previous message was about the more generic case (including :$arch qualifiers instead of only :any (this bug being about :any on virtual packages)).

in the steam-installer case
I had to ask the release team (a while ago) to apply some force to work
around a known limitation in britney2, but in the gobject-introspection
case, my hope is that it can be resolved (possibly by a bug fix
in britney2, or possibly by changing gobject-introspection) without
forcing the installability check to be ignored.

Absolutely.



Paul

Thanks for being elaborate in your reply, it matches what I was thinking. (I wasn't aware of the other examples though).

OpenPGP_signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature