Re: Red Carpet 0.9 beta

[Jonas De Vuyst <jonas devuyst advalvas be>]

Hello,

I've got some remarks about the dependency problems.

> Red Carpet is currently very zealous in pursuing dependency problems.
> Anytime tou attempt to complete a transaction, it attempts to resolve
> your entire dependency graph before proceding.  We're looking at
> altering this behaviour for the next release early next week, to only
> resolve those portions of the graph that will be directly altered by
> the requested operations.

Sounds great ;).

> The fact remains, however, that Red Carpet doesn't tell you to remove
> things unless they have unresolved dependencies.  No matter how many
> words you write in capital letters, it won't change the fact that you
> have packages installed on your system which, according to the rpm
> database, don't have their dependencies satisfied.

I noticed that Red Carpet has the same problems as Debian's apt-get,
though it promised to handle those problems in a smarter way (though the
point made above is a step in the reight direction).

The problem here is that the dependencies suck. They might be incorrect
or they might just suck. For example the Debian package of Nautilus
requires Mozilla 0.7 (IIRC) while Mozilla does fine with 0.8 (not really
the maintainer's fault as the README stated this wrong), Galeon then
again, wants Mozilla 0.8. However, it is impossible to install them both
at the same time.

In Debian unstable I've gotten used to the idea of having broken
packages sometimes but I didn't espect to see them in Ximian's desktop.
For example when I try to install libgtk1.2-doc Red Carpet wants me to
remove abiword, balsa, Bonobo Component Framework, bug-buddy,
codebreaker, codecommander, dia, eog, gcd, gcombust, gdk-imlib-dev, gdm,
gedit, gftp, GIMP 1.2, glade-gnome, glunarclock, Gnapster,
gnome-applets, gnome-bin, gnome-card-games, gnome-control-center,
gnome-core, gnome-games, gnome-gataxx, gnome-glines, gnome-gnibbles,
gnome-gnobots2, gnome-gnometris, gnome-gnomine, gnome-gnotravex,
gnome-gtali, gnome-gturing, gnome-gv, gnome-help, gnome-iagno,
gnome-iconedit, gnome-mahjongg, gnome-media, gnome-media, gnome-napster,
gnome-panel, gnome-panel-data, gnome-pim, gnome-pim-conduits,
gnome-same-gnome, gnome-session, gnome-stones, gnome-terminal,
gnome-utils, gnome-xbill, gnomeicu, gnumeric, gphoto, grdb, grip,
gtetrinet, gtk-engines-metal, gtk-engines-notif, gtk-engines, ... (I'm
at about half of the list, but I'm tired of typing ;-).

This is probably not a bug in Red Carpet but in the packages, fixing
this will require policy.

About gnucash: Trying to install gnucash gives me (lib-)guile dependency
errors. I was able to install it though by first choosing
libguile-6-dev, libguile6-slib and libgwrapguile-dev. A bug!

> So, we'll try to let Red Carpet be a little more lax about fixing the
> problems on your system, but that doesn't change the fact that
> portions of your system are broken.  :-(

About gnucash: I also tried to install this and Red Carpet gives me
(lib-)guile dependency errors. I was able to install it though by first
choosing libguile-6-dev, libguile6-slib and libgwrapguile-dev. This
seems to be a genuine bug!

One more thing, that's actually a bit off-topic, is Red Carpet going to
allow the users to tune in to other channels? While I find it a good
idea that Ximian will offer diferent channels (distribution, Ximian,
customers), I would find it sad if people were limitted to Ximian's
offer. For example, if I write a small program that neither Ximian or
Debian finds good enough to include in their channel then I'm forced to
tell the user to install it manually for each version... from command
line, as Red Carpet doesn't seem to handle individual packages (perhaps
this should be done in Nautilus, but using Red Carpet for dependency
resolving?).

Anyway, keep up the good work!

- Jonas