[Pkg-gtkpod-devel] Bug#658538: Further explanation

[Chow Loong Jin]

On 04/02/2012 06:28, Matěj Laitl wrote:
> On 4. 2. 2012 Chow Loong Jin wrote:
>> Sounds like Depends would be the right choice here...
>>
>>> This would crate circular dependency between libgpod4{,-nogtk} and
>>> libgpod-
>>> common, but I think this is okay as they come from the same source
>>> package.
>>
>> ...But this sounds like a real problem. It's not okay for circular
>> dependencies to happen even if they're from the same source package[1].
>> Perhaps we'll have to just go with Recommends.
>>
>> Thanks for spotting this before I made the upload.
>>
>>> [...]
>>
>> [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg02111.html (#5 under
>> Why?)
> 
> I see. Unfortunately, #1 under How? in [1] cannot be applied as some 
> executables from libgpod-common actually link libgpod:
> strohel at edgy ~ $ ldd /lib/udev/ipod-set-info /usr/bin/ipod-read-sysinfo-
> extended | grep gpod
>         libgpod.so.4 => /usr/lib64/libgpod.so.4 (0x00007f198d192000)
>         libgpod.so.4 => /usr/lib64/libgpod.so.4 (0x00007fb3aa949000)
> 
> How strong is the Recommends dependency? E.g. when an an ordinary user 
> installs amarok from her favourite gui/cli, which then pulls libgpod, will it 
> pull libgpod-common if it were "Recommended" by libgpod?

Recommends are installed together with the package by default, but some people
disable that by specifying Apt::Install-Recommends=0 in /etc/apt/apt.conf(.d/*).
I think it should be safe to ignore such users since it was a change they made
manually, so they'll just have to bear with the consequences.

Recommends is slightly weaker than Depends in the sense that the recommended
package does not have to be configured ((pre|post)inst running) before the
package recommending it, whereas for depends the reverse is true.

This behaviour is documented in the Debian Policy under 7.2:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html

> If so, this kind of dependency would be fine.
> 
> Disclaimer: I'm not a Debian user (I'm rather a Gentoo guy) so I have nearly 
> no knowledge of .deb packaging system, nonetheless I enjoy such cross-distro 
> knowledge sharing.

I can tell. Debian has no lib64. ;-) Thanks again for your help.

-- 
Kind regards,
Loong Jin

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