Bug#527920: please break circular dependency
package: xserver-xorg User: debian...@lists.debian.org Usertags: piuparts piuparts.d.o Hi, thanks for maintaining Xorg! As you'll know xserver-xorg-core depends on xserver-xorg and xserver-xorg depends on xserver-xorg-core, which is called a circular dependency, which sometimes breaks apt (not dpkg) in interesting ways. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=190558 for a quite good discussion of the problem. It also effects piuparts testing, as you can see http://piuparts.debian.org/sid/state-circular-dependency.html - piuparts only tests packages which dependecies were successfully tested and well, for circular dependencies this will never happen. Whats wrong with making xserver-xorg depend on xserver-xorg-core and making xserver-org-core only recommend xserver-org? (I do the same with the tuxtype and tuxtype-data packages, and tuxtype-data is also basically useless without tuxtype. You could look at the images, yeah ;-) (Actually I'm not sure this last paragraph (copied from a similar bug) applies here. From the package names it sounds as if xserver-xorg-core shouldnt recommend xserver-xorg at all even.) regards, Holger signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Bug#527920: please break circular dependency
reopen 527920 forcemerge 396613 527920 thanks On Samstag, 9. Mai 2009, Julien Cristau wrote: This is a dupe of an existing bug. Closing. I'd be nice if you'd either given the number or even better, merged yourself. But thats bts-usage nitpicking and hardly worth saying :-) What's worth saying is, that you didnt give a reason for 396613 being marked wontfix here and that there is none in 396613. You dont even give a reason why there is this circular dependency which causes real problems for existing tools. Can you please explain?! Thanks, Holger signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Bug#527920: please break circular dependency
Holger Levsen wrote: I'd be nice if you'd either given the number or even better, merged yourself. But thats bts-usage nitpicking and hardly worth saying :-) What's worth saying is, that you didnt give a reason for 396613 being marked wontfix here and that there is none in 396613. You dont even give a reason why there is this circular dependency which causes real problems for existing tools. Can you please explain?! Because these two packages do actually depend on each other to function. That's a hard dependency and there's no way around it. Ian Jackson has argued strenuously that circular dependencies are not a bad thing, and that dpkg handles them fine, and I'm in agreement with him. That said, the reason why xserver-xorg was split from xserver-xorg-core was to separate the very large and rapidly changing server config scripts from the server itself, allowing us to make rapid improvements to them with minimal stress to ourselves and our users. Now that those scripts are essentially gone, it's time to start thinking earnestly about reuniting them as xserver-xorg, and letting -core go away. This is *not* the same thing as removing the circular dependency, which is necessary and correct so long as these two packages exist despite whatever buggy tools. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
