Hi,
On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 12:07:37PM +0100, Lo�c Minier wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On dim, f�v 20, 2005, Nicolas Boullis wrote:
> >
> > While trying to update a woody system to sarge, I doscovered that the
> > libgtk2.0-0 depends on itself, which breaks upgrade of the package.
> > Please fix this broken dependency and consider fixing it for sarge
> > through testing-proposed-updates.
>
> What problem did you get? Could you paste the log of the error? A lot
> of people upgraded without experiencing any trouble.
I had the problem when trying to upgrade a computer with aptitude's UI
from woody to sarge. When I was trying to upgrade libgtk2.0-0, aptitude
was considering the new version broken, and was refusing to upgrade it.
(Oddly, it was considering it broken, but wasn't showing any missing
dependency.)
I had to upgrade this system so I manually "dpkg -i --force-depends"ed
libgtk2.0-0 and then coulf finish the whole upgrade.
Unfortunately, I now can't reproduce the problem in a clean woody
chroot, which means the problem probably is slightly more complex than I
initially thought.
> > (This bug may be a policy violation, deserving a serious bug report, but
> > I did not check.)
>
> I agree this self-dependency is weird and a bit bogus, but it isn't
> explicitely forbidden by the policy and didn't cause breakage until
> now. We'll try to fix it, but I don't think that deserves a severity
> higher than minor (if it causes no breakage).
Reading policy 7.2:
"
Depends
This declares an absolute dependency. A package will not be
configured unless all of the packages listed in its Depends field have
been correctly configured.
"
OK, self-dependencies are not forbidden but, according to policy, all
the packages depended on must be configured before the depending package
can be configured. Hence, self-depending packages must be configured
before they can be configured, which mans they can't be configured.
Hence, as far as I understand it, policy considers such packages
uninstallable.
(I've seen in a bug report that you temporarily merged with this one
that you consider that circular dependencies are alright. Reading the
same section of policy, I think the are not.)
Cheers,
Nicolas
