Renaming packages: maintscripts
Hello.
It's been not once when I hit an issue described below.
Now I hit it in one of the packages I maintain, but so
far I can't figure out a good solution for it.
The issue is with package renaming and handling of dpkg
maintscripts.
Having in mind typical renaming scenario: package A has
been renamed to B, and transitional package A' has been
created - dummy which merely depends on B, so that upgrades
work fine. B breaks A before the transitional version,
so dependencies ensures that A and B aren't installed
at the same time.
Everything works fine indeed till someone tries to install
B on a system where A is installed, without upgrading A
to A'. Apt solves the Breaks by removing A, but not purging
it. So we're left with dpkg maintscripts from A.
And quite often, on purge, maintscripts removes config files
(especially ucf-managed) and performs other cleanup. But all
that should not be done, since it will now break B!
Basically I want to ensure that if one installs package B to
a system with A installed, A should be upgraded to A' at the
same time. This works when upgrading A to A' (satisfying A'
dependency and installing B), but does not work when installing
B alone when A is installed.
Only this way it is possible to work around old maintscripts
in the renamed package.
But I don't see a way to satisfy this. Something I didn't think
of ?
Thanks,
/mjt
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