'How to solve cyclic dependencies while installing software on linux?

I am new to the computing world. My intention is to figure out a generic approach to solve cyclic dependencies while installing new software on Linux, if it exists. Here I am using the case of Google chrome to better illustrate my question. While installing Google chrome (both using package manager and apt-get) I encounter the following problem:

Selecting previously unselected package google-chrome-stable.
(Reading database ... 262709 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking google-chrome-stable (55.0.2883.87-1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of google-chrome-stable:
google-chrome-stable depends on libappindicator1; however:
Package libappindicator1 is not installed.

To solve the above error, I tried installing libappindicator1 but that returns another dependency error: 

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libappindicator1 : Depends: libindicator7 (>= 0.4.90) but it is not going to be installed

Now here we encounter the cyclic dependency. When trying to install libindicator7 the following error is received:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 google-chrome-stable : Depends: libappindicator1 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

As you can see that I cannot install the package because of the dependencies. Now one way is to use apt-get -f install and let Linux magically do it's work. But that won't teach me much. Using this example (or suggest a better example), can we figure out a better approach to solve the problem of cyclic dependency? If this is a stand-alone case of cyclic dependency while installing a new software or I made a mistake in interpreting the errors then I can remove the question.

Some helpful links-

[1]: https://askubuntu.com/questions/764040/im-having-a-hard-time-installing-google-chrome-on-16-04-lts-please-help [2]: How to solve Cyclic Dependency [3]: How to Solve Circular Dependency [4]: cyclic dependency ... how to solve?

linuxgoogle-chromeinstallationubuntu-14.04circular-dependency


Solution 1:[1]

The problem is usage of dpkg to install google-chrome-stable. DPKG does now install the required dependencies and leave the system in a broken state. 

sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable.deb

This installs the package with required dependencies.

dpkg only installs a package, so doing dpkg -i packageName.deb will only install this Deb package, and will notify you of any dependencies that need to be installed, but it will not install them, and it will not configure the packageName.deb because well...the dependencies are not there.

apt is a Package Management System that handles the installation of Deb packages on Debian-based Linux distributions. A Package Management System is a set of tools that will help you install, remove, and change packages easily. So apt is like a clever dpkg

Solution 2:[2]

What helped me with installing libappindicator1 on Debian and in Docker as well - is installing this package manually. Also, it depends on another one libindicator7.

RUN curl -p --insecure "http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/liba/libappindicator/libappindicator1_0.4.92-7_amd64.deb" --output libappindicator1_0.4.92-8_amd64.deb \
    && curl -p --insecure "http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libi/libindicator/libindicator7_0.5.0-4_amd64.deb" --output libindicator7_0.5.0-4_amd64.deb \
    && dpkg -i libindicator7_0.5.0-4_amd64.deb \
    && dpkg -i libappindicator1_0.4.92-8_amd64.deb \
    && rm libindicator7_0.5.0-4_amd64.deb \
    && rm libappindicator1_0.4.92-8_amd64.deb

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1
Solution 2 Oleg Abrazhaev

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