Comment 2 for bug 236360

Sebastian,

Thanks for the explanation - glad to know that it was an intentional change between Hardy and Intrepid.

However, I am afraid there is still a problem. Having been using the package system for over a year now, I do expect it itself to remain stable and reliable, and I have found out various ways to get out of dependency problems. This one has me stumped, though.

Here's the problem, in a nutshell: evolution can be removed; evolution-dataserver-common cannot, as gnome-panel and gnome-applets depend on it. In between there is evolution-dataserver, and that's where I have problems. I can remove it, and remove spamassassin and spamc, gnome-pilot and gnome-pilot-conduits. Syanptic allows this; nothing else is removed; there are no warnings, nothing breaks. BUT as soon as (any of) those five packages are removed, update-manager flashes on a notification that they have to be re-installed.

I've tried updating, upgrading, removing, in various orders. Nothing leaves me in a stable state without those five packages. Somewhere the update-manager system knows that they HAVE to be installed.

THAT is what I'm concerned about, and what I would like fixed if at all possible. I've tried looking at the dependencies of all five packages, without seeing any logical reason why they all have to be installed. I suspect it's a fairly deep inverse dependency problem, where a system library like libc6 has been marked as depending on them, rather than the other way round.