Re: new fields in debian/control
Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de> writes:
> On Sun, 16 Jul 2000, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>
> > Package: packaging-manual
> >
> > I'm adding three new fields to debian/control:
> >...
>
> Sorry if I do perhaps address the wrong people, but I would like to
> propose two other fields (there might be better names than the ones I
> found):
>
>
> Successor-Of:
> As far as I know, a package isn't upgraded if it's name has changed
> (e.g. fvwm2 -> fvwm or cdgrab -> abcde). This field is meant for this case
> (the new package is "Successor-Of" the old package). There must't be more
> than one successor of a package, and dpkg/apt should treat a package with
> this field as if it still has the name it has before when upgrading.
>
>
> Provides-Source-For:
> For packages like qmail-src that are shipped only as source and that you
> have to compile yourself. E.g., if you don't know that, it looks as if
> vchkpw has an unmet dependency. A package with this field could perhaps be
> automatically compiled when installing.
>
I think that would be good things to have.
Furthermore I have one more thing I missed up to now:
When two source packages are merged (as it was the case with my
(lib)gql package, which had two source packages (gql and gql-drivers)
in version 0.0.6 and was reduced to gql in 0.0.7), an old source
package (in this case: gql-drivers) stays in the Distribution.
We could extend the semantics of your proposed 'Provides-Source-For'
field for source packages (altough I am not sure wether I interpreted
you OK) like that:
When present in an source package, it means that this package
obsoletes the mentioned source package, and it can be removed from the
distribution.
Altough a 'Obsoletes' field would perhaps be more apropriate (which has
some use in binary packages, too - it's about the same as your
'Successor-Of').
Just my 0.02 Euro,
Andy
--
Andreas Rottmann | Dru@ICQ | 54523380@ICQ | a.rottmann@gmx.at
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