Linux fat/bloated

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 10:47:00AM -0400, Marc Lijour wrote:
> You never experienced a failure to install? Somebody talked about dependency 
> hell in this thread before. The fact is the current situation is far from 
> perfect. Let's take an example with Debian apt which we presented recently.
> 
> We have tested Apt???s behavior on a snapshot of the Debian pool taken in the 
> middle of 2005, and available in the EDOS subversion repository as 
> Data/Sources/Packages-pool.gz. Of the many tests performed, we retain the
> following three, which clearly exhibit some of Apt???s limitations.
>     ??? apt-get install abiword-gnome=2.2.7-3 fails
>     ??? apt-get install abiword-gnome=2.2.7-3 abiword-common=2.2.7-3
>       succeeds
>     ??? apt-get install abiword-common=2.2.7-3 abiword-gnome=2.2.7-3
>       succeeds, but installs one more package!
> 
> As you can see apt fails to devise a solution to install abiword though there 
> are (first case). Solutions found by apt are also order-dependent	as you can 
> see in the later cases.

Was this a snapshot of debian stable, or debian development?  gnome
transitions cause breakage due to incorrect packages sometimes.  They
get fixed, before they are released.

Passing versions to apt-get is also not for normal use.

So the test might be interesting in terms of trying to make apt better,
but it is not a test of normal use or even of how apt is meant to be
used.

gnome packages do seem to be among the more frequently broken.

Len Sorensen
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