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rookie099
Asked: 2018-04-04 07:00:18 +0800 CST

Are apt-cache depends/rdepends always inverse

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Does it make sense that apt-cache depends/rdepends are not always inverse to each other?

For instance, I have a host where apt-cache rdepends liblognorm1 lists these reverse dependencies: rsyslog liblognorm-dev, but apt-cache depends rsyslog does not include liblognorm1 (only liblognorm5) in its dependencies.

Is this a feature or a bug?

debian

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Its a feature, and a necessary one, and your example is already a very good example.

    A libraries older version might be depended on by an older version of a program. That programs current version will not depend on that older version of the library though. It may depend on a newer version of the library, or may have dropped/replaced that dependency.

    The same program name can appear in the depends/rdepends output, but it can be referring to different versions. Use apt-cache showpkg, its output is a bit more clear about which version you are looking at and which other other packages are required or broken in which versions.

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