Possibly wrong circular dependency

[yotabits]

In the following exemple I have pkga and pkgb and consequently the two following packages.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<package format="2">
  <name>pkga</name>
  <version>0.0.0</version>
  <description>The pkga package</description>

  <maintainer email="tkostas@todo.todo">tkostas</maintainer>

  <license>TODO</license>

  <buildtool_depend>catkin</buildtool_depend>
  <build_depend>pkgb</build_depend>

</package>

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<package format="2">
  <name>pkgb</name>
  <version>0.0.0</version>
  <description>The pkgb package</description>

  <maintainer email="tkostas@todo.todo">tkostas</maintainer>


  <license>TODO</license>


  <buildtool_depend>catkin</buildtool_depend>
  <exec_depend>pkga</exec_depend>
</package>

Running catkin_make gives me the following error:

CMake Error at /home/tkostas/test_ws/build/catkin_generated/order_packages.cmake:11 (message):
  Circular dependency in subset of packages:

  pkga
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  /opt/ros/kinetic/share/catkin/cmake/catkin_workspace.cmake:42 (include)
  CMakeLists.txt:63 (catkin_workspace)


-- 
Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also "/home/tkostas/test_ws/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".
See also "/home/tkostas/test_ws/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeError.log".
Makefile:332: recipe for target 'cmake_check_build_system' failed
make: *** [cmake_check_build_system] Error 1
Invoking "make cmake_check_build_system" failed

I think there is not any circular dependency problem because pkgb depends on pkga only as exec_depend, am I missing something?

To reproduce, in a ros env

git clone git@github.com:yotabits/dependency_ros_failure.git && cd dependency_ros_failure
catkin_make

[dirk-thomas]

This is intentionally considered to be a circular dependency. If you want to release these two packages as Debian packages neither of them can be released first:

• pkga can't be build without installing the dependency pkgb
• The Debian package of pkgb can't be installed without the Debian package pkga

[yotabits]

Thank you for the feedback 👍