blog/Circular_package_dependencies_harms_apt_recovery.html

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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</title>
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  14  <h1>
  15      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  16
  17  </h1>
  18
  19 </div>
  20
  21
  22     <div class="entry">
  23       <div class="title">Circular package dependencies harms apt recovery</div>
  24       <div class="date">27th July 2010</div>
  25       <div class="body"><p>I discovered this while doing
  26 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatic_upgrade_testing_from_Lenny_to_Squeeze.html">automated
  27 testing of upgrades from Debian Lenny to Squeeze</a>.  A few packages
  28 in Debian still got circular dependencies, and it is often claimed
  29 that apt and aptitude should be able to handle this just fine, but
  30 some times these dependency loops causes apt to fail.</p>
  31
  32 <p>An example is from todays
  33 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/~pere/debian-upgrade-testing//test-20100727-lenny-squeeze-kde-aptitude.txt">upgrade
  34 of KDE using aptitude</a>.  In it, a bug in kdebase-workspace-data
  35 causes perl-modules to fail to upgrade.  The cause is simple.  If a
  36 package fail to unpack, then only part of packages with the circular
  37 dependency might end up being unpacked when unpacking aborts, and the
  38 ones already unpacked will fail to configure in the recovery phase
  39 because its dependencies are unavailable.</p>
  40
  41 <p>In this log, the problem manifest itself with this error:</p>
  42
  43 <blockquote><pre>
  44 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
  45  perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.10.1-1); however:
  46   Version of perl on system is 5.10.0-19lenny2.
  47 dpkg: error processing perl-modules (--configure):
  48  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
  49 </pre></blockquote>
  50
  51 <p>The perl/perl-modules circular dependency is already
  52 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/527917">reported as a bug</a>, and will
  53 hopefully be solved as soon as possible, but it is not the only one,
  54 and each one of these loops in the dependency tree can cause similar
  55 failures.  Of course, they only occur when there are bugs in other
  56 packages causing the unpacking to fail, but it is rather nasty when
  57 the failure of one package causes the problem to become worse because
  58 of dependency loops.</p>
  59
  60 <p>Thanks to
  61 <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/06/msg00116.html">the
  62 tireless effort by Bill Allombert</a>, the number of circular
  63 dependencies
  64 <a href="http://debian.semistable.com/debgraph.out.html">left in Debian
  65 is dropping</a>, and perhaps it will reach zero one day. :)</p>
  66
  67 <p>Todays testing also exposed a bug in
  68 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590605">update-notifier</a> and
  69 <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/590604">different behaviour</a> between
  70 apt-get and aptitude, the latter possibly caused by some circular
  71 dependency.  Reported both to BTS to try to get someone to look at
  72 it.</p>
  73 </div>
  74
  75       <div class="tags">Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nuug">nuug</a>.</div>
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