[maemo-developers] hildon-application-manager doesn't work reliable with large dependency stack

[From: Graham Cobb]

On Thursday 17 June 2010 09:45:12 Bjoern Ricks wrote:
> hildon-application-manager complains about conflicts with already installed
> packages which should be updated too. Also this behaviour isn't reliable
> and reproducable. On some devices it may work. It is ALWAYS possible to
> install all new packages without any complains with apt-get upgrade. 


It sounds like you are hitting the HAM protection mechanisms.  Basically, HAM 
tries to prevent packages being updated from repositories other than the one 
which installed it.  In fact, it isn't as simple as that, as HAM has a system 
of repository priorities based on signing keys.  But the bottom line is that, 
based on which repositories are involved, HAM will not allow some package 
upgrades which apt-get will be perfectly happy to do.

I am sure someone can explain the details.  However, to keep it simple, make 
sure you are using just one repository for your testing and always put the 
updated versions of packages into the same repository which provided the 
original.  

In my experience that is why it is different on different devices: if you have 
been using more than one repos then different devices may have packages 
installed from different repos and upgrades will or will not work depending 
on which repos was used for the installation on that device.  I see this all 
the time in my own testing (I use some personal repos for my testing). I 
don't think it is the complexity of the dependencies (except that lots of 
dependencies increases the likelihood one of them hits the protection 
mechanism).

Note that a user will never be able to install a replacement for any package 
provided by the system -- that is the main purpose of this system.

Graham