[NTLUG:Discuss] Debian

[Kevin Brannen]

Pat Regan wrote:

>Kevin Brannen wrote:
>  
>
>>If I'm wrong, hopefully someone more versed in Debian will correct me...
>>
>>One of the battles we've recently run across at work is when you want to 
>>remove software from a Debian based install.  It doesn't seem to work 
>>very well, as it complains about breaking dependencies and such.  That's 
>>all well and good, but what if you really want the software removed?  
>>(Note, I'm not talking about libs which is problematic, but it has been 
>>reported it won't let us remove apps!)
>>
>>So I think "dependency hell" can come in many varities.  Pick your 
>>favorite poison... ;-)
>>    
>>
>
>I may be incorrect, but I was always under the impression that when
>people spoke of "dependency hell" it was always in the opposite context
>you are using it in.  As in, when you have to install Foo, you have to
>install the dependencies Bar and Baz first.  I remember the fun of that
>before I had a distro with apt-get.  You'd download one RPM, only to
>find out you need 3 more...  The one of them needs another, and so on
>down the line until you needed 25 packages that apt would have figured
>out for you :p.
>  
>

You are correct, that's the way the phrase is normally used.  You 
install Foo which wants libbar v1.2, while Baz wants libbar v1.1, and 
they both want it to be called libbar.so.  So my "reverse problem" is 
different, but to me it's still a variation of the root problem.  And it 
(the uninstalling) is one I'm told "apt-get" based distros have that RPM 
based distros don't have.  But I don't know as I've personally never run 
a Debian system.

BTW, not all distros have a bad problem with dependencies.  I've heard a 
lot about apt-get and how it will auto-install to help solve it.  YaST 
from Suse will do the same thing, even though it is RPM based, so RPMs 
aren't automatically bad.  I seem to recall the Redhat package program 
having this ability too.  I think the "I need these other 2 RPMs" 3 
times over problems come from when you go outside the vendor's tool and 
start messing with RPMs from other sources.  When that happens, we 
should not hold the vendors responsible; that's our own problem (or more 
likely the rogue RPM author's problem. :-)

>Your problem is the opposite.  You want to be able to remove a package
>that another package claims to depend on.  Programs don't always just
>depend on libraries to be present, but other programs as well.  It is
>possible you just don't realize why the dependency is there.
>
>It is also possible that the package maintainer was a little overzealous
>defining the dependencies.  If that is the case, you could probably file
>a bug report.
>  
>

Yes, this is probably the issue.  The most common one I've seen is when 
I install KDE and it seems to demand I install sane and xsane, but I 
don't have a scanner on the system, so that's just wasted space.  I've 
always felt that an easy solution to this is for the distro authors (or 
maybe it's the app authors) to create an optional "null" lib (or null 
app) that can be installed to satisfiy the dependency, but is otherwise 
empty.  I haven't seen that, but it sounds good on when I think about 
it. :-)

Kevin


>I suppose it is also possible that it isn't really a dependency for you,
>but it is for most other people (in which case the depended-upon package
>should probably be recommended and not depended upon).
>
>Fun, huh? :)
>
>Pat
>  
>
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