Re: Agenda for the 2009-05-26 Packaging Committee meeting

[Kevin Kofler <kevin kofler chello at>]

Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> As far as I can tell, in Debian a versioned suggestion is still just a
> suggestion.  If B = 1.0 were installed, it would be up to the package
> A to detect this and do the right thing.  But I agree this is a nasty
> corner case which would need to be made explicit one way or another.

IMHO, it's pretty clear what should happen: if suggestions are being
honored, the package should be upgraded, if they aren't, it shouldn't. I
don't see why this should be handled any differently than installing
dependencies which are entirely not there. If A actually BREAKS when B =
1.0 is there, it needs a Conflicts: B < 1.2 in addition to the Suggests: B
>= 1.2 (and with that Conflicts, yum will upgrade B together with A even
without the soft dependency).

        Kevin Kofler