Ubuntu has gone!

[Steven Susbauer]

Steven Susbauer wrote:
> Juan De Mola wrote:
>> Your opinion is good, valid and welcomed but I don't share this.
>>
>> The idea of a new dep checker come up after 2 years with the same
>> crazy thing: you tell to ubuntu that you don't need something and it
>> says you need uninstall n (where n is a separated pack not related or
>> related by one or two libs). Example of this is the magical duo
>> Evolution Ekiga. If the 1st is uninstalled the 2nd must too.
>>
>> It's the perfect logic you say don't need be reviewed?
>>
>> My tiny brain is unable to pass it on.
>>
> 
> This is not the case. Evolution does not exist on any of my systems, yet
> I have Ekiga. Ekiga depends on evolution-data-center, which is probably
> related to how it stores contacts, but you can remove Evolution itself.
> (See http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/ekiga)
> 
> When you understand how exactly dependencies are generated, it makes a
> lot more sense that the system is not a problem. The system does not
> "check" dependencies, the packager lists them. When you try to install
> it sees what the packager put as required, and will pull them in as
> well, and does the same for all dependencies of the original package. A
> new system checking dependencies is not going to change this behavior.
> 
> If you feel a package should not have something as a dependency, you
> should file a bug or ask on launchpad. There is a very big chance you
> will be told exactly why something is a dependency.
> 
> The only dependency issue that bothers me is how much relies on the
> ubuntu-desktop meta package, though I have found in Jaunty a lot less is
> a dependency and a lot more is recommended, meaning you can remove the
> recommended items without forcing ubuntu-desktop to also be removed.
> 
> Cheers,
>   Steve

As an afterthought, I thought I would mention that Ekiga in Debian also
depends on evolution-data-center, so you will essentially have the same
issue, in fact the dependencies appear to be identical
(http://packages.debian.org/lenny/ekiga).

It is always a bad idea to mix Debian and Ubuntu packages without making
sure you understand the inner workings of the packaging system
completely. If you want to use Debian packages you should use Debian.