If the new version of Anki needs a new version of a dependency, just install the new version alongside the old one. Whatever happened when I installed this deb may also be an option.
If handling this is a huge problem, why not have all the rolling-release programs include their own dependencies. Most of us have so much storage space that, without films/games/music, we couldn't fill it even if we tried. It's cool to use minimal amounts of storage when you're on a virtualized machine on Azure/AWS, but those machines aren't used to run Anki anyway. Storage for executable usage is effectively infinite nowadays on consumer devices.
>If the new version of Anki needs a new version of a dependency, just install the new version alongside the old one.
Yes, and do that with every other package as well.
Are you even considering the implications of what you're saying? The next-to-latest version of Anki is for example in the repos of the most popular distribution. The latest version of Anki is not in the repos, and its dependencies break something in that distro.
You're free to install Anki's latest version, but there are reasons why stable distributions will not just jump on the latest version of a fairly unknown package.
If handling this is a huge problem, why not have all the rolling-release programs include their own dependencies. Most of us have so much storage space that, without films/games/music, we couldn't fill it even if we tried. It's cool to use minimal amounts of storage when you're on a virtualized machine on Azure/AWS, but those machines aren't used to run Anki anyway. Storage for executable usage is effectively infinite nowadays on consumer devices.