A service can have dependencies on other services. During startup, when a service declares it has a dependency then that service will be started before it's dependent. This ensures that a services' functionality is in a valid state during the lifetime of the application.

Dependencies are declared in a service by either injection or in the Init lifecycle phase.

The the following example we have an application with 4 services. Service A depends on B & C, B on C and C with D. This relationship is shown with the black arrows.

The red arrows show dependencies which are invalid as they create circular dependency which is described below.

Circular dependencies

The kernel does not allow circular dependencies.

In the example above we have four services called A, B, C and D. The black arrows show the valid dependencies but the red arrows show illegal dependencies - that is, a dependency that cannot be made as it would create a circular dependency.

The reason this is an issue is that, when a circular dependency exists the kernel cannot determine the correct starting order.

e.g. if C depends on A, but A indirectly depends on C via B which one should start first?

If this situation happens during the injection or init lifecycle phases the kernel itself will stop returning an error.