On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Ian Jackson wrote: > The meaning of self-referencing dependencies is as follows: > > A (version x) --Depends-> A (no version specified) > A (version x) --Depends-> A (satisfied by x) > A (version x) --Provides-> A (version x) > Useless, but should be allowed and ignored. > > A (version x) --Depends-> A (not satisfied by x) > Dependency cannot be satisfied; this is definitely a bug. > Behaviour should be sane (no coredumps, etc) but may be arbitrary > (installation program may ignore it, complain, whatever). > > A (version x) --Conflicts-> A (no version specified) > Ignored as regards A itself, but may be affected by Provides in > other packages. > > A (version x) --Conflicts-> A (version spec y) > Ignored as regards A itself; currently no meaning because Provides > are not versioned, but they will be and then it will have the > obvious meaning. > > A (version x) --Provides-> A (not version x) > Currently not supported (syntax error), but in future will allow > differently-versioned dependencies to be satisfied. When this is > possible it should be used only with great care. > > I believe that dpkg's behaviour conforms to this specification, and > that always-broken self-referential dependencies are ignored.
AFAIK dpkg does. > Deity should conform to this specification too. If that means > changing its dependency calculation code then it should be changed. Okay, I will add a special case for dependancies that are not conflicts to make it conform to what you have specified. Could you clarify the last situation you have written? I am not sure what you mean in that case. (A (version x) --Provides-> A (not version x)) Most people who have posted on this subject seem to agree that self depending should be reported as a bug so the only reason I am changing deity is for backwards compatibility with dpkg. I see no real reason to support these sort of buggy packages. There are some other cases in the display code where this issue comes up. I will be leaving those as is. This will be more clear later.. Jason -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .