Re: RFC: some new deb package flag: "upgrade-conflicts"

[Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org>]

On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 01:38:55AM +0200, Simon Richter wrote:
> > Debian wants to provide a clean upgrade path for all packages.
> > But sometimes this is not possible (because it would require modifying
> > the users' home directories and such stuff)
> > Maybe it could be useful to have some kind of "upgrade-conflict" of
> > packages - these packages shouldn't be upgraded automatically, and
> > should probably be given the possibility for displaying a debconf note.

To stop a package being upgraded automatically, you can change the
package name.

> There are a few approaches to problems like these:
> 
>  - Ask the administrator in the config script whether she allows
>    upgrading of users' config files, then do it in the postinst.
>  - Provide a wrapper that asks the user whether she wants to upgrade her
>    config files
>  - Hack the source so that old-style configs can be read in (issuing a
>    warning)
>  - Hack the source so that an old-style config is ignored (issuing a
>    warning)

   - Change the package name and names of the config files, and let
     the admin run the old and new versions concurrently. Old stuff
     keeps working, new stuff will also work, and nobody has to go out
     of their way to support any complex scenarios. Users can do
     whatever is needed to convert their config files and start using
     the new version iff they want to. Admins can purge the old
     package when and iff the users no longer want it.

I don't really see any reason why the same approach that is used for
shared library ABIs will not also work for any other ABI.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing,
 `. `'                          | Imperial College,
   `-             -><-          | London, UK