Re: Upgrade procedure for tetex
'Kai Henningsen wrote:'
>
>I'd like to understand where you are coming from.
>
>*Do* you use TeX?
Yes. But not enough lately to have run into problems.
>Do you really think that packaging problems, while important, are more
>serious than content problems?
Yes. I think packaging is most critical. Bad packaging makes for
install and/or upgrade problems for everyone including Unix neophytes
who are ill equipped to solve those problems. Moreover, bad packaging
is fixable.
>I've not yet seen somebody say "I use the old TeX, and I'd rather continue
>to use it than work around some problems while upgrading". Those people,
>however, are the *only* people that would profit from your position.
>
>So, I'm essentially questioning your priorities. They look reversed to me.
I went a little overboard: I was frustrated by the manual
intervention "solutions" that were being proposed. Since the QA
thread was fresh on my mind, I was astonished that no one else was
complaining about the tetex packaging. At first, I thought tetex was
simply incompatible with upgrading. After I looked at the packaging
it became clear to me that tetex can probably be fixed. Now,
I hope we can get good packaging before 1.3 ... (A motto: to have
your cake and eat it too :)
>Note that I don't say that we should not improve the teTeX packaging.
>
>As for your suggestions, it was very unclear what problems these were
>supposed to solve, and how.
In short, I was trying to suggest a technique whereby dpkg would
automagically replace (most) of the old-tex without manual intervention
by the user. dpkg is missing a few features that would help in this
case, but it is wrong to conclude that dpkg doesn't have enough
facilities for this type of upgrade. The packaging suggestions I made
attempted to show ways to use /current/ dpkg features to resolve the
packaging problem.
Now that I've thought about it more I should post a summary of my
approach (but I'll wait until tomorrow at earliest).
--
Christopher J. Fearnley | Linux/Internet Consulting
cjf@netaxs.com, cjf@onit.net | UNIX SIG Leader at PACS
http://www.netaxs.com/~cjf | (Philadelphia Area Computer Society)
ftp://ftp.netaxs.com/people/cjf | Design Science Revolutionary
"Dare to be Naive" -- Bucky Fuller | Explorer in Universe
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