On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 02:07:34PM +0800, Niall Young wrote: > > > How about a postrm::downgrade hook to reverse any changes made in the > > > new version's preinst::upgrade so that when the old version's > > > preinst::upgrade > > > is applied you're not left with a potential mix of configuration? > > > seamlessly - i.e. reverse all changes made in the upgrade. Is there > > > another way? > > You'd need more than that. Apt would need to be changed to handle > > undoing of package splitting (Conflicts/Replaces), and is not always > > possible anyway, new packages, might use new file-formats which can be > > converted from the old-version but not back again. > Yeah - it's a minefield of nightmares I know. Debian handles upgrades > really well, but downgrades aren't as seamless. A postrm::downgrade > hook is a pretty major change, it would take years to roll out - just > wondering if anyone has thought about the problem before and if/when > Debian could address this? Never. This is not an effective use of developer time -- there are enough bugs with *upgrading* packages yet that we don't need to be worried about supporting downgrades. If you want individual maintainer scripts to support downgrading, dpkg already gives you everything you need: just compare the value of $2 with the current version to detect whether it's an upgrade or downgrade, and handle appropriately. But I'm not likely to accept patches for this on any of my packages, as I don't believe this is useful enough to justify the added complexity. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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