Re: Conflicting packages not of extra priority.
> > > This seems a bit rediculous to me...
> >
> > Mmm, why?
>
> Because from what you say, libc6 should have a priority of Extra, as it
> conflicts with several non-Extra packages, as do almost all of the other
> packages delivered by the glibc source.
Mmm, let's see:
The libc6 package from hamm Conflicts with libc5 (<< 5.4.33-7).
This is the version in bo, for hamm we provide a libc5 with which libc6
does not conflict. This is allowed, of course.
It also Conflicts with libpthread0 (<< 0.7-10). The libpthread0 in hamm
was version 0.6-1 and it was optional. To install it, you should remove
libc6 first :-). This was obviously a bug, which is now fixed in slink
since libpthread0 has just been removed from the distribution.
Let's see libc6-dev. The version in hamm had this conflicts line:
Conflicts: libc-dev, libdl1-dev, libdb1-dev, libgdbm1-dev, libpthread0-dev
Every package in that line was a libc5 development package.
[ Obviously conflicting with itself (libc-dev) does not count ].
Since we do not provide the ordinary libc5 development packages in hamm
(not the -altdev ones but the ones we shipped with bo), this is ok.
But even if we did, they would clearly merit for extra priority, because
it is a "specialised requirement" to compile with a library that is not
the standard one.
Let's see the package "locales":
Conflicts: localebin, wg15-locale
localebin does not exist. wg15-locale does not exist either.
There is no problem here.
If you want, you can consider inexistent packages as having extra
priority all of them.
Conflicts with packages in previous Debian releases do not count.
We are aiming at global consistency *within* each Debian release, not
at global consistency within all Debian release at the same time.
> > The rationale for this policy is to make the set of
> > required+important+standard+optional packages a self-consistent set.
> >
> > Why would this have to be ridiculous? It actually allows the user
> > to install as many optional packages as he/she wants, without fearing
> > about conflicts.
>
> What is rediculous about it is the number and character of the packages
> that will thus be forced to reduce their priority to Extra!
Why?
Having an extra priority does not mean it is a "second-class" package.
It just means that it does conflict with other packages not being extra,
or are only likely to be useful if you already know what they are or have
specialised requirements, as the definition says, that's all.
[ I hope you don't mind if I reply to the rest of the message in another
mail ].
Thanks.
--
"d0eb8309b4573c13844dd5025e9d3fdc" (a truly random sig)
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