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[era <1199199@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For example, auctex has "Depends: emacs23 | emacs24 | emacs-snapshot" --
I believe precisely to *support* users who want to be able to use emacs-
snapshot instead of one of the regular emacsen, but without forcing
anyone to give up the version they already have.  This dependency is
resolved when one of the packages is installed.

The metapackage "emacsen" exists precisely so that a package can pull in
an Emacs-agnostic version, but perhaps it should be somewhat more fine-
grained.  A typical pattern is "Depends: emacs23 | emacsen" but then
this is insufficient for packages which require specifically GNU Emacs,
not e.g. xemacs21, which also "Provides: emacsen".  Nevertheless, I
think autex (too) should perhaps fall back to "| emacsen" so that anyone
can sastisfy the dependency with a package which "Provides: emacsen"
instead. (Maybe add "Conflicts: xemacs21" if that is an issue, but then
that is too harsh on systems where you want both GNU Emacs and Xemacs.)

I have not looked further into this matter than the single example of
auctex (I'm not an auctex user, it just happened to be first on the
list), but I believe it is perhaps less severe than indicated in the
original bug report.  Nevertheless, I have checked "Affects me too"
because I certainly agree that this merits additional triage, and
perhaps escalation upstream (i.e. to Debian).

(Matters may be complicated somewhat by the fact that Ubuntu used to
have an independently packaged Emacs, but IIRC that was back when it was
emacs22. Furthermore, the sad state of xemacs21 at least in Ubuntu is a
huge can of worms.)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1199199

Title:
  emacs dependency inhibits using latest version

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