Re: [php-maint] php5-mysql in backports.org linked against libmysqlclient14?

[Sidney Markowitz <sidney@sidney.com>]

I was able to solve my problem by downloading the previous version of
the php5 packages, ~bpo.1 instead of the current ~bpo.2, and installing
them using dpkg.

I looked for what packages depend on libmysqlclient* to see what
conflicts there could be, and there don't seem to be many, though of
course you can't just ignore the problem if you do use one of those
packages.

Does the package system allow you to express a conditional dependency
such as "if A is installed it must be version >= N" but does not require
that there be a package A? That would allow you to have a backport
version for every package that links with libmysqlclient and have a
backported libmysqlclient15 package that forces the installation of the
backport version of any of those packages that are installed.

Does that make sense? I don't see how you can get any benefit of newer
MySQL client software on Debian sarge without that.

 -- sidney