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Re: What are the dangers of using packages from both stable and testing?



Chris Metzler wrote:
> But that's the best way it can play out.  The worst way -- which is
> thankfully uncommon, but can and does happen -- is if Depends or
> Conflicts don't catch the problem.  An example: package A in stable
> requires libfoo version 2.4 or greater; user installs package B, which
> requires libfoo version 3.1, and so that gets brought along, replacing
> v2.4; package A isn't marked for removal because 3.1 > 2.0; but
> software compiled against libfoo v2.4 chokes with libfoo v3.1, and so
> the binaries in package A are now broken).  The package manager for
> libfoo can't set Conflicts: for *everything* compiled against earlier
> versions of libfoo because libfoo is just too commonly used.  And if
> this happens with something like glibc, you're hosed.

This scenario is always a bug in libfoo for breaking backwards
compatability without changing its soname, and Debian has plenty of
standard ways to deal with it that don't involve conflicting with lots
of packages. If you see something like this, file a bug report.

-- 
see shy jo

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