Re: Detecting dependency cycles and conflict dependency problems in packages

[Nicolas Chauvat]

Bernhard R. Link wrote:
* Nicolas Chauvat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [011222 01:53]:
[...] (I am using testing). [...]
What I call a conflict dependency problem is something like (A conflicts 
with B and B depends on A). I saw at least one case where this was on 
purpose to facilitate upgrade, but I would say that it is an actual 
problem in most cases.
[...]
A known limitation is that my script does not care about version numbers 
and hence will probably report a number of false alarms.

I think this might be due to the nature of testing. If for example B
needs A and A and B have newer versions but the new version of A is
not compatible for use through B, this can only be reflected by making
A conflicting with to old B. 

Hmm, I said it would report some false alarms, not false alarms only :-)
Let's take a couple examples from the report I posted ealier :
oo2c conflicts with voberon-dev and voberon-dev depends on oo2c. No 
version numbers involved. With such dependencies, I would say the 
software just can't be installed without the use of --force.

omniorb depends on omniorb. That's an easy to satisfy dependency, but is 
it useful ?

same for csound that depends on csound.
There are others. I will try to read throught the full report and post a 
list.

This should normally be no problem, as the new A can do with the new B,
but this only holds for unstable. The alorithm for putting packages in
testing is still very simple. But even in the furure it will not be
able to detect all problems. To resolve the described situation, it
[...] things and temporary breaking B is better then breaking more important
packages.
Note that I'm not involved in the testing-scripts, so most told here
are assuptions. But I hope you see the difficulty to keep testing
in consistency.
I was not advocating the use of some automatic tool to keep testing in 
consistency.

My idea was to detect dependency problems in order to file bugs if 
needed and let package maintainers fix them, not to prevent packages to 
enter testing in case they were to introduce dependency cycles.

BTW, I improved my script to add dot file output in order to draw a 
graph of the dependencies, as soon as I get back my access to my web 
page, I'll post the results there.

--
Nicolas Chauvat