KDE update

[Onno Benschop]

On 04/03/09 17:58, Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> On Wednesday 04 March 2009 3:50:32 am Onno Benschop wrote:
>   
>> Can someone please explain to me why I'm asked to download 32.2Mb of an
>> update that has as a description:
>>
>>     "No change rebuild to satisfy build dependency for kdepim security
>>     update"
>>
>>
>> What I'm really asking is these three different questions:
>>
>>    1. Why am I downloading something that is no different from the
>>       previous version. As I understand the packaging system, any update
>>       to kdepim should be more than able to cope with being part of a
>>       specific version using depends and requires.
>>     
>
> The dependencies are listed in the package.  To change the dependencies inside 
> the package, the whole package has to be re-issued.
>   
Uh, yes. I suppose my point was that a dependency change, a single line
in a text file, meta-information, shouldn't require the installation of
the whole package.

>>    2. Why am I downloading that much data for just version number
>>       changes, if that's really all that is changing?
>>     
>
> Because the entire thing is one package.
>   
Nope, there are 10 different packages, all with the same description.

>>    3. Why am I downloading these updates when I don't actually have
>>       kdepim installed at all?
>>     
>
> Not Kontact, Kmail, Korganizer...?
>   
Not that I can find or recall installing.


Don't get me wrong. I understand what is happening, even why it's
happening from a technical perspective. What I fail to understand from a
"this is just wrong" perspective that it's technically the way it is -
which is why I posted to the list.

I didn't want to get into the "incremental packages" discussion, but I
thought that this was different enough to warrant at least some
conversation about the meta-information associated with a package. I
realise at present the meta information is also part of the .deb files
but apt doesn't know about .deb's, so I presume it's getting the
information from the pkgcache.bin file which I suspect is directly built
from getting the package lists from a mirror.

What I'm saying is that the dependencies are in that information, so
there doesn't appear to be a need to download the .deb to install it if
nothing inside the .deb actually needs changing.

-- 
Onno Benschop

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