Strange idea

["Nikita V. Youshchenko" <yoush@cs.msu.su>]

Hello debian-devel.

I was reading the threads about libpng[23] and glibc/db1 than cause 
incompatabilities that are hard to describe with debian dependency control 
fields. And I've got an idea.

What about adding one more field with the following semantics.
If package P has

FirstCompatable: N

in it's control, then P should conflict with any package that depends on P 
and allows P version to be lower than N. Than means, any package that 
depends on P should depend on P (>> M), where M>=N.

This should solve the situation when newer version of package is 
incompatable with the previous. E.g. if it provides a library that links 
with libpng3, and the previous version linked with libpng2, and changing 
soname is a bad idea for somereason.

Sorry if the idea in silly or not new.