Can upgrades "break" dependencies ?

dunric · 04-27-2007, 11:54 AM

It looks like a stupid question from the longtime slacker, but I've found one basic important issue not enough clear to me:

May updated packages from patches/packages introduce new dependencies by a definition ? I'm speaking about packages included in a release not those additionally thrawed in.

It's very important for install/cron-upgrade and forget kinds of boxes like routers. To be sure there won't arise any new unresolved dependencies after upgrades.

Just to make clear if I was lucky nothing got broken up until now

rworkman · 04-27-2007, 12:17 PM

It's not common for patches/* to introduce new dependencies, but it can (and does) happen occasionally.
A good example is 11.0's update to gaim in patches/ - the seamonkey package, which it *used* to need, had some issues with the nss (encryption, basically) libraries not having a stable API/ABI across upgrades, and this caused gaim to stop working under some conditions. The solution was to add the mozilla-nss package, which *does* promise API/ABI stability, and rebuild gaim against those libs instead.

dunric · 04-27-2007, 05:03 PM

Thanks for your explanation rworkman. It's no wonder I didn't encountered new dependencies in Slack 11.0 'cause I don't use Gaim