dpkg 0.93.76: bugfixes, hopefully final changes before release

[Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>]

This version of dpkg has a number of further improvements to the
dselect user interface and fixes a few minor bugs.

I'd like everybody who can to upgrade and test it ASAP, to help ensure
that the version that ships with the public beta release is as stable
as possible.

There are two fairly significant changes: firstly, dpkg can now
deconfigure packages in order to replace a single important package
with two halves, in case the package maintainer decides to split it;
secondly, dpkg-deb has support for a new .deb file format which allows
more room for future expansion and can be manipulated more easily on
non-Debian systems.

I'd like people both to test dpkg generally, by doing test
installations and upgrades, and in particular to try to exercise these
new features (the deconfiguration one may be difficult to test, as it
requires odd combinations of depending and conflicting packages).  The
new archive format is only generated if you say `dpkg-deb --new'.

Thanks to Bill Mitchell for several bug reports and to Michael Deisher
for some useful recent comments about dselect.  Further comments are
encouraged, though as we get closer to the release date the scale of
the changes I'll be willing to make will get smaller, of course.

dpkg (0.93.76) BETA; priority=MEDIUM

  * dpkg --auto-deconfigure option (used automatically by dselect) allows
    `important' packages which many others depend on to be split.
  * dpkg should no longer fail an assertion during complicated
    multiple configurations involving packages which are on hold.

  * update-alternatives supports negative priorities.
  * /etc/alternatives is included in the .deb archive.

  * Package priorities changed: Required (Req), Important (Imp), Standard (Std),
    Optional (Opt) and Extra (Xtr).  For backward compatibility Base is an
    alias for Required, and Recommended is kept as a level just below Standard.

  * dselect shows introductory help screen when entering package lists (both
    main and recursive).
  * dselect help messages made more friendly.
  * dselect package list `quit, confirm, and check dependencies' key is
    now Return rather than lowercase `q'; likewise method list `select this
    one and configure it' key.
  * dselect selects packages with priority `standard' or better by default.
  * dselect `v=verbose' becomes `v=terse' when in verbose mode.

  * hard disk method unmounts /var/lib/dpkg/methods/mnt on failure.
  * disk methods' install message uses `stty' to find out what the
    interrupt character is, and uses that in the prompt (rather than ^C).
  * dpkg now tolerates ^Z characters in Packages files.
  * harddisk method doesn't display extra slash when updating packages file.
  * harddisk method burbles less if it doesn't have a good default.

  * dpkg-deb now supports new flexible format, but old format still default.

 -- Ian Jackson <iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk>  Wed, 20 Sep 1995 02:49:41 +0100

851956a192749c4213de8192b09436c7  dpkg-0.93.76.deb
3b861e7149844dab391f86d96bb3be55  dpkg-0.93.76.nondebbin.tar.gz
2b04b03e36207be7220a85c83f402440  dpkg-0.93.76.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root       189931 Sep 20 03:00 dpkg-0.93.76.deb
-rw-rw-r--   1 root     ian        186943 Sep 20 03:00 dpkg-0.93.76.nondebbin.tar.gz
-rw-rw-r--   1 ian      ian        266354 Sep 20 02:50 dpkg-0.93.76.tar.gz