Re: pgapack-1.0-1

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

Dale Scheetz writes ("Re: pgapack-1.0-1"):
> On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > Karl R. Sackett writes ("pgapack-1.0-1"):
> > > Note:  If you are upgrading from PGAPack-0.2 you need to edit
> > > /var/lib/dpkg/available and /var/lib/dpkg/status to correct a problem
> > > with the control file in the old version.  Find the strings 'PGAPack'
> > > and change them to 'pgapack' before you do the upgrade.  Crude, but it
> > > worked for me...
> > 
> > Why is this necessary ?
> 
> I gave him a preinstall script to fix this. He said he would incorporate 
> it in the next release.

I hope I've misunderstood this.  It sounds like you've written a
preinst script that modifies /var/lib/dpkg/status !!!!!

This will not work.  You should absolutely definitely never ever touch
dpkg's internals in maintainer scripts; that's a recipe for nothing
happening at best and disaster at worst.

If the script does something else then please tell me what it is :-).

I also want to know why he thinks the strings need to be changed.
Perhaps there is a bug or misfeature in dpkg that he's trying to work
around.

Ian.