KDE update

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 05:49:37 +0900 Onno Benschop <onno at itmaze.com.au> wrote:
>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.

All built from a single source package.  The system doesn't support partial 
builds.

>>>    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.
>
I didn't look into the details of this case, but generally this means that 
something in the share object (.so) the package is linked against has (or 
may have) changed and so the package has to be recompiled so that it will 
be correctly linked.

Scott K