Re: Package splitting and upgrades
Santiago Vila wrote:
>
> Greetings.
>
> When a package `foo' in potato is split in two for woody, `foo' and `bar',
> it is considered acceptable that people upgrading from potato to woody
> lose the functionality provided by `bar' and have to read the release
> notes to know why? What if there are a lot of splits like this and the
> release notes becomes several kilometers long? Is this the type of
> quality we want for our users?
>
> I think the only method which is fool-proof (using either apt or dselect)
> is to make `foo' to depend on `bar' under woody as a temporary measure,
> and drop the dependency in woody+1, but some people consider this a gratuitous
> dependency.
Other method could be splitting package 'foo' in 'foo1' and 'foo2', and
leaving 'foo' only as a fake package which depends on 'foo1' and 'foo2'.
At a later release 'foo1' could be renamed to 'foo' (replacing 'foo1')
and the fake package disappear. A bit messy if is a package with a well
known name, and will not work if upgrading a release different than the
previous one, but you may find it useful.
Cheers,
Agustin
--
=====================================================================
Agustin Martin Domingo, Dpto. de Fisica, ETS Arquitectura Madrid,
(U. Politecnica de Madrid) tel: +34 91-336-6536, Fax: +34 91-336-6554,
email:agmartin@aq.upm.es, http://corbu.aq.upm.es/~agmartin/welcome.html
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