How does apt-get work out a package's dependencies?

J_K9 · 11-15-2005, 09:42 AM

Hi all,

As you may or may not know, I started a project called hyper-get a couple of weeks ago, but there is just a little problem I can't find a solution to (it's for Debian-based systems).

I was wondering if anybody knew how apt-get discovers a package's dependencies.

Does it do it using dpkg?
If so, how does dpkg do it? Does it update a file which it then interprets (in which case I could copy this file to be used in the application)?
Does it discover the dependencies at the repos?
Which means that we'd have to simulate this with hyper-get...
Does it discover them at another place? On the internet? On the local computer?

I would be extremely grateful if someone could let me know how it is done, so that we can begin work on this application soon.

Thanks in advance!

M.

cs-cam · 11-16-2005, 03:12 AM

man dpkg should help. I've never used Debian but in Arch, that packages are just archives with a file that contains a list of deps, a file that contains a list of files, a file that contains a description and a small script that does whatever is required to install the package. .deb's would probably be somethign similar

signifer123 · 12-03-2005, 02:53 PM

in case anyone runs into this again they can serach for apt-get to find out how it works, we havea naexplaination on it in the blog

h**p://hyper-get.sourceforge.net/news/?p=5#more-5

^^had to do that or it wouldn't allow the url