[pkg-boost-devel] Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)

[Will]

6, 2010 at 12:17 AM, Russ Allbery <rra at debian.org> wrote:
> "Steve M. Robbins" <steve at sumost.ca> writes:
>
>> I wouldn't place any of Boost in that category.  In fact, I wouldn't
>> place "aptitude" in that category, either.
>
> aptitude was historically the recommended tool to use for upgrades because
> it had the best dependency resolver for handling the dist-upgrade case.
> For so long as that's true, it should be priority: important, which means
> that by definition the things that it requires are also priority:
> important or higher.
>
> If apt-get is now strong enough that we can recommend it for upgrades
> without qualms, then aptitude is another alternative package manager and
> standard may be fine.  Is that now the case?
>
> --
> Russ Allbery (rra at debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
>
>
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>

aptitude is the preferred package management tool, so I'm thinking
that the priority of libboost-iostreams should be upgraded [1][2].
aptitude has more features than just a better dependency handler, like
the significantly more advanced search syntax and the smarter,
interactive resolver. I think the better decision is to edit it such
that it doesn't require that library. However, that's a decision for
the aptitude team to make, since I have no idea how heavily it relies
on that package, or what portions of the program depend on that
library.

I'd be glad to donate some of my time if the aptitude team wanted it though.

[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch02.en.html#_basic_package_management_operations
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude

-- 
-Will Orr