Re: how to have yum prefer one dependency over others
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 02:40:30AM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
We really need a way to be able to specify an explicit default which
is used
independently of what the user has installed, even if we don't always use it
(I can see the case of gnome-* vs. kde-*); the version number of the
Provides would be one solution. ("Shortest name" or "first in the
alphabet"
is just a hack, which forces silly things like using "phonon-bknd-gst", so I
don't think that's a good way to make the decision, though even that was
better than what we have now, which is almost unpredictable.)
Debian policy is that any virtual dependencies must also have an
explicit dependency. In your case it would be something like
Requires: phonon-backend-gstreamer | phonon-backend
If the virtual dependency is already satisfied then nothing happens,
but if not phonon-backend-gstreamer would be used to satisfy it. This
works fine for package dependencies, but I'd imagine file-based
dependencies would make things more awkward.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59(a)srcf.ucam.org