On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 01:37:48AM -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote: > Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > > On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 03:28:53PM -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote: > >> Do any other distributions purposefully add broken dependencies to their > >> repositories (So that you wouldn't be able to install it without > >> pointing at a second source for a package)? > > > > Debian allows them, > Where is the documentation of this policy? because... > > > and they have a special program called 'equivs' > > which you can use to locally compile packages in order to satisfy such > > broken dependencies: > > > > http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-helpers.en.html > > > This just explains how the equivs command works and how a user can use > it if they've installed a piece of software from outside the packaging > system and then want to list it as being available to the package manager. This is getting a bit off-topic, but anyhow ... The Debian Reference Manual suggests using equivs: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch-package.en.html#s-apt-trouble The Debian Policy Manual contains explicit rules about broken dependencies here: http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-sections As you can see, in Debian's main repository they explicitly disallow broken deps for certain types of deps, but Debian has quite a complex dependency system, so this doesn't apply for things like "Suggests" and "Enhances". BTW "Recommends" was added to the above list in Debian Lenny - previous releases of Debian allowed main packages to Recommend packages outside main. Anyway, I think my point is not that we should care about what Debian does, but that we should make what is and isn't allowed explicit in the Fedora packaging guidelines. Rich. -- Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat http://et.redhat.com/~rjones virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any software inside the virtual machine. Supports Linux and Windows. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/ -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
