Am 09.03.2013 19:10 schrieb "Adam D. Barratt" <a...@adam-barratt.org.uk>: > > On Sat, 2013-03-09 at 18:45 +0100, Julian Taylor wrote: > > A problem with failing the installation if matlab is missing is that it > > prevents migration from Ubuntus proposed repository to the main one. > > Migration requires that it installs and does also not make other > > packages uninstallable. > > E.g. this right now affects dynare, it can't migrate because it depends > > on matlab-support which does not install. > > > > I though that the debian unstable -> testing works the same way, but > > apparently not as e.g. dynare was allowed to go into testing. > > In the context of testing migration, installability is determined by > computing package relationships, not by actually attempting to install > the affected packages (which generally wouldn't add much and isn't > feasible given the number of packages involved).
This seems to indicate that Debian is not affected by this problem. I am not familiar with the way Ubuntu manages these things in detail, but if there is a way to solve this problem in Debian for Ubuntu I am all for it. Right now this package causes a problem with an automated transition rule checker. Making it install under any condition, will cause problems that affect users. If this is necessary, the patch should at least handle the situation where matlab-support is installed, but no matlab, and something/someone wants to use matlab. This could be a dependent package trying to compile a MEX file. It would need to install some executable that brings up a meaningful error message, especially when invoked via the desktop file in an X session. Maybe it is leaner to handle this package as an exception in the transition checker. This was done in Debian's piuparts, AFAIK. Michael
