potato -> woody upgrade failure and locale* packages

[Tomohiro KUBOTA <tkubota@riken.go.jp>]

Hello,

'apt-get dist-upgrade' from Potato to Woody fails and libc6 is
left unconfigured in a certain condition.

It fails when either of locale-{ja,ko,vi,zh} is installed.  These
packages exist in Potato because locale subsystem of glibc-2.1
was  incomplete and did not support these locales.  Thus, locale-*
packages included incomplete makeshift for these locales.
However, glibc-2.2 has full locale support and locale-* packages
is not needed any more since Woody.

The problem occurs because locale-* packages conflicts with
libc6 (>= 2.1.94-1) but apt doesn't know locale-* packages are
not needed any more.

I think there are two solutions.

The first solution is:
  - remove locale-* packages from Woody.
    (locale-{ja,ko} have been already disappeared from Sid.)
    This is reasonable because these packages are not needed
    (instead locales package is needed) in Woody.
  and
  - locales package to have
       Conflicts: locale-ja, locale-ko, locale-vi, locale-zh
       Replaces: locale-ja, locale-ko, locale-vi, locale-zh
       Provides: locale-ja, locale-ko, locale-vi, locale-zh
    This is reasonable because glibc-2.2 came to support these
    locales, which was before realized by locale-* packages.

  I think all four of locale-{ja,ko,vi,zh} packages are not
  needed for Woody/Sid because:
   - locale-{ja,ko} have been already removed from Sid.
   - locale-vi_1-5 has Conflicts: libc6 (>= 2.1.94).
   - locale-zh has Conflicts: libc6 (>= 2.1.94-1).

  If locales package will have dependencies against locale-*
  packages, these locale-* packages will be safely removed from
  Woody.

The another solution is:
  - don't remove locale-* packages from Woody/Sid.
  - locale-* packages in Woody/Sid are empty packages (like
    task packages) which depends on locales (>= 2.2-1).

  However, I think this solution is less beautiful.
  We will not able to remove empty packages in future.


Thus, I think the first solution is better.

I'd like to know whether maintainers of locales and locale-{ja,ko,vi,zh}
packages agree my idea or not.

---
Tomohiro KUBOTA <kubota@debian.org>
http://www.debian.or.jp/~kubota/
"Introduction to I18N"  http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/intro-i18n/