understanding broken package

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2007 at 04:11:47PM +0200, Gérard BIGOT wrote:
> On 10/7/07, João Pinto <lamego.pinto at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Starting point:
> > Package A version X, Depends on Package A-DATA version X
> > Boths Package A-X and A-DATA-X are installed.
> > Action:
> > dpkg -i Package A-DATA, version X+1
> > Result: The package is properly installed without any warnings, however
> > Package A becomes broken, GUI update/install tools will refuse to work until
> > an apt-get -f install is issued (which will remove the broken package).
> >
> > Shouldn't the dpkg install package warn or not install the new package by
> > checking that an installed package will become broken ?
> 
> dpkg knows only how to deal (install, check if it overwrite a file from
> another package, remove, repair, purge) with a single package. dpkg has no
> idea about dependency.

This is entirely untrue. dpkg has lots of dependency processing, and has
had it since well before apt ever existed.

This particular problem is a very long-standing bug in dpkg, in fact
listed in its TODO file:

 * check depending packages when installing new version.

I'm not sure if anyone's planning to work on it in the near future,
though.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]