>>>>> On Mon, 15 Aug 2011, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:

> The problem is, there are nearly always circular dependencies. Any
> package that depends upon autotools is part of a hundred-plus-large
> circular dependency cycle. So if we're saying packages can count on
> RDEPENDs being merged beforehand except when necessary to resolve
> cycles, then we need to say how cycles are to be resolved.

Hm, I always thought that e.g. for packages that have no reverse
dependencies the issue would not arise. For example, if you have the
following RDEPEND cycle:

    C ← D ← E
    ↓   ↑
    B → A

then the ordering of A, B, C and D would be unspecified, but it would
be guaranteed that package E (which is not part of the cycle) is being
installed last.

Ulrich