Re: Proposal: 'Expires' entry in Debian package header
On Mon, Jul 17, 2000 at 09:13:17PM +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> There are a lot of duplicate packages on my system, for example
> tcl 8.0, tcl 8.2, tcl 8.3, libstdc++ 2.8, libstdc++ 2.9 and 2.10,
> etc. Probably you have the same. Is it allowed to make a suggestion
> to get rid of these old packages and to get a more homogeneous
> environment?
>
> Each Debian package should include an Expires entry containing the
> date when it will expire. The default should be 0xFFFFFFFF, i.e.
> it never expires.
What does this win us over doing it manually? I don't believe there is any
technical reason for multiple libstdc++ versions, and in fact I don't think
potato includes 2.8. It's just too much trouble to do mass recompiles of
many packages, with possible breakage along the way, just to get rid of
an extra library. Maintainers get bug reports whenever their package depends
on a old library, and that works well enough.
As for tcl, I understand it's a slightly more complex story, with many
programs having dependencies on a specific version. The same is true for
many other extra libraries - libgtk1.0 vs. 1.2, ncurses4 vs. ncurses5. The
problems may have to be dealt with, but I don't see how an automatic system
is going to do anything but annoy developers here.
--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
http/ftp: x8b4e53cd.dhcp.okstate.edu
It was starting to rain on the night that they cried forever,
It was blinding with snow on the night that they screamed goodbye.
- Dio, "Rock and Roll Children"
Reply to: