On Tue, 3 May 2005, Warren Young wrote: > Igor Pechtchanski wrote: > > > Circular dependencies are not bugs. > > Well, there are two types of circular dependencies, and they're only a > problem in one of these instances. > > Circular dependencies of packages in operation is not a problem. That > is, you can say that there is Package A which uses facilities in Package > B, and vice versa, and this is not a problem. These two packages simply > have be installed together or uninstalled together to avoid a dependency > problem. > > Circular dependencies during the [un]installation process _is_ a > problem. This is where we get the old problem of cygwin.dll or bash > being removed during an upgrade before all the uninstall scripts for > other packages are run. This requires a different dependency tree than > required to solve the above problem. > > The distinction is this: it can't be said that 'man' requires /bin/sh in > operation, but its uninstall script does. We shouldn't demand that bash > be installed along with man, because any of several packages can provide > /bin/sh. But if bash is the one providing /bin/sh on your system, it has > to be removed after man during an upgrade where both packages have been > updated.
I also wrote, in that same message: > > Besides, installation dependencies aren't quire the same as > > uninstallation dependencies. I've posted on this topic before... I understand the need to save bandwidth, but snipping away the relevant part of the message, and then repeating it in the reply (albeit in some more detail) isn't a particularly helpful use of the bandwidth either. Igor -- http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/ |\ _,,,---,,_ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ [EMAIL PROTECTED] |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D. '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-. Meow! "The Sun will pass between the Earth and the Moon tonight for a total Lunar eclipse..." -- WCBS Radio Newsbrief, Oct 27 2004, 12:01 pm EDT