Re: Proposal: 'Expires' entry in Debian package header
On 17-Jul-2000 David Starner wrote:
> 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.
>
While i may not agree with the method proposed, there is an issue here. I
recently did potato -> woody upgrade. libc5 is no longer used on my system,
but was installed. Same thing with the three libsdtc++'s I had.
Now, recently deborphan made it into debian. This program will list every
package on your system that is not depended on by something else. Simply go
thru the list and remove the cruft.
I would be in favor of a well thought out and crafted way for users to not have
packaging cruft left on their boxes. I am unsure if this proposal does that.
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