Re: support for older distributions

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Russell" == Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> writes:

    Russell> To manage this fully through the Debian system we will
    Russell> need support in the BTS for reporting bugs to different
    Russell> people depending on the package version.  Is this
    Russell> possible?

Another problem which I consider a big issue, I think we need some way
to keep track of different compiled versions.

For instance, if I compile my own version of libx from unstable for my
unstable system, and then run apt-get upgrade, apt will try (under
various different situations) try to install libx-dev from
unstable. However, this is wrong, because even though the version
numbers match, libx-dev may contain static libraries which require the
newer version of libc6. (not to mention different compile time options
that could be used when compiling libx).

So I really think there needs to be some way libx can say:

Package: libx
Build-Id: xxxxx

where build is some unique identifier inserted at compile time. This
could be similar to the Message-Id header on this E-Mail. Each time a
package was compiled, it would get a different Build-Id.

And then  libx-dev can say:

Package: libx-deb
Depends: libx (= version [xxxxx])

which says libx-dev can only be installed with the libx version that
was built at the same time. Actually, that could be simplified to

Package: libx-deb
Depends: libx (=[xxxxx])

as per my definition of build-id, if it is the same, the version must
also be the same. Using this new syntax would only occur for special
cases, eg. most (if not all) -dev packages.

Of course, other methods are also possible (eg. insert depends of libx
into depends of libx-dev), but this is my preferred option.

You might even be able to use this new field to help the BTS tracking
of packages somehow, but I haven't thought too much of this aspect.
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>