[wpkg-users] [Bug 117] Dependencies ignore priority

[bugzilla-daemon at bugzilla.wpkg.org]

http://bugzilla.wpkg.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117





--- Comment #12 from Frank Lee <rl201 at cam.ac.uk>  2008-05-10 10:28:06 ---
> Well, first of all: I do not call this dependency management at all. 

You are welcome not to, of course. But this is what Debian calls dependency
management and it seems to work for them.

> That's
> also why I put a note to the change notes for some 1.0 releases that
> dependencies have been fixed now - simply because the implementation did never
> reflect real dependency management - but a kind of "include".

They did exactly what I intended them to do and they were not broken. They did
not do what you thought they ought to do based on your understanding of
dependency management. Now I find that the latest version (I have only just
updated from 0.9.7 + sundry patches to 1.0.2) causes lots of problems and have
provided a patch to restore what I consider to be the correct behaviour. 

I accept that we disagree about what the correct behaviour is and am happy to
replace all my "depends" tags with "includes" tags at some point in the future.

> So the upcoming "include" functionality will allow you to do the same. However
> includes in this sense are by no means providing an appropriate replacement for
> real dependencies. As I already wrote this might be acceptable to for a few
> packages. But "leveling" out various cross-"dependencies" using such an include
> functionality could become a real headache.

Debian copes. Ubuntu uses the same package management tools and seems to be
doing quite well on it these days!

> In any case the "include" functionality will bring you back this possibility.
> 
> I am not yet sure if such a thing as "chaining" would still be a requirement
> then. In fact I don't really think so since chaining is a very very rare
> use-case and using include and dependencies could do the job as well.

Can I clarify the include/depends/chains meanings? I'm a little confused so
here's what I think you mean:

* package A depends B  : package B must be installed before package A is
installed. Priorities will be over-ridden to ensure this.
* package A includes B : package B will added to the list whenever package A is
to be installed. Priorities will remain.
* package A chains B   : package B will be installed after package A.
Priorities will be over-ridden to ensure this.

Is that correct? I think it's important to be clear about what we're trying to
achieve in each case - I wasn't sufficiently clear about the introduction of
'depends', it seems! 

Yours,

Frank


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