Bug#714409: This bug still bites

[Greg Alexander]

Control: severity -1 grave

Hi guys -

The fact that some systems have been specifically found to have
"dpkg 1.15.something" installed is not a reason to demote this bug.

My system happened to have dpkg 1.probablyalotolderthan15 installed, and
it failed on this bug.  apt-get would not upgrade mutt because mutt
stupidly depends on gtk.  It would not install libgtk2.0-0_2.24.20-1
because gtk depends on dpkg.  It would not install dpkg because dpkg
depends on pinentry-gtk2.

That's all fine and good, except that libgtk2.0-0_2.24.20-1 doesn't
declare its dependence on dpkg, so apt stupidly wedges itself until dpkg
is manually upgraded.  This seems like an imminently rectifiable problem.

Now, since I had to install dpkg manually, its dependence on the new tar
went un-obeyed, and the system was then wedged until tar could be installed
*really* manually.

But that's downstream of your bug.  Which you knew about.  And knew was
insanely frustrating to users.

Debian's dependency system is *the* killer feature of Debian.  It works
quite well.  Most projects are willing to play by the rules, or my 10
year old installs would all be completely dead.

Please ensure that gtk *becomes* one of the projects that plays by the
Debian dependency rules.

Cheers,
- Greg