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Re: [PATCH] Uninstall .dll last, reinstall first - final version


On Wed, 4 May 2005, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 04:45:22PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> >On May  4 09:05, Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) wrote:
> >> At Tuesday, May 03, 2005 5:28 PM, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> >> > On May  3 21:49, Max Bowsher wrote:
> >> >> The other potential solution would be to attempt to uninstall the
> >> >> packages in dependency-sorted order, but that might get awkward in
> >> >> the case of circular dependencies.
> >> >
> >> > See my previous posting:  Circular dependencies are bugs, right?
> >> > Creating a dependency tree and complaining about circular dependencies
> >> > in setup would be nice, though.
> >> >
> >> > Corinna
> >>
> >> As you pointed out earlier, circular dependencies can be considered
> >> bugs in the setup.hint files.  Shouldn't they be caught and fixed
> >> when setup.ini is being made?  Then setup/Brian, which/who has enough
> >> to do, wouldn't have to worry about it.
> >
> >In theory yes.  It just won't hurt to have a dependency checker in setup
> >at one point, methinks.
>
> I hate to disagree but I don't think circular dependencies are always
> bugs.

Absolutely.  In fact, there are *three* kinds of dependencies:
package-level (needed for functionality), postinstall (needed for
postinstall scripts to run), and preremove (needed for preremove scripts
to run).  It's ok for the first to be circular.  The second and third
being circular is a problem, but doesn't have much effect because
postinstall/preremove scripts don't do much currently.  If running the
postinstall script were necessary for the package files to function
properly (and, consequently, the package would not function after running
the preremove script), there would be trouble.

> For instance, it would not be inconceivable for gcc to rely on gcc-mingw
> since, for correct operation of gcc, gcc-mingw should be present.
> However, the same rationale could be made for gcc-mingw.  It doesn't
> make any sense to just install gcc-mingw since it needs gcc to function
> so it could rely on gcc.

I didn't feel like repeating the (lo-ong) discussions we had about this
last year (all of the relevant messages should be in the cygwin-apps
archives).  Most of the points made so far are in those threads already.
	Igor
-- 
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