samjam's Journal: Debian Dependancy Hell

Just started suffering from Debian Dependancy Hell with apt-get and dselect

Once I "start" to install a debian package, even if it fails because of unsatisfied dependancies it then only knows of the "newer" "failed" package and I can't install the old one with dselect any more.

I build the latest spamassassin .deb from source but it wont install because I my version of html-parser-perl is tool old.

I can't install the latest html-parser-perl cos my perl is too old, etc etc, I need to upgrade the box.

So I install HTML-Parser-3.28 by hand the perl way. It passes all the test cases, NOW I can install spamassassin if I remove the dependancy on html-parser-perl as a package as I know I have the right files anyway.

NO!

> debian/rules clean
> debian/rules binary

perl: relocation error: /usr/lib/perl5/auto/HTML/Parser/Parser.so: undefined symbol: Perl_Tstack_sp_ptr

doh!
Lets start AGAIN

> dpkg-source -x spamassassin_2.61-1.dsc
> debian/rules binary

perl: relocation error: /usr/lib/perl5/auto/HTML/Parser/Parser.so: undefined symbol: Perl_Tstack_sp_ptr

Gah!

And theres no way I can get back to where I was.

So I need to get perl 5.8 before can get html-parser-perl working the .deb way, I need to build debs from SOURCE if I want to avoid upgrading my entire libcs and dependancies, but .deb dont't have simple src.rpm like redhat so I can easy automate it.

SPIT SPIT SPIT

Who says debian has no dependancy hell?

Grrrr

And if I dare add a "testing" source to /etc/apt/sources.list then dselect goes barmy telling me I have to update all kinds of packages.

It seems the useful notes are here:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-sourcehandling.en.html