Re: Getting newer kernels into stable

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Andrew Pollock <debian-lists-2004@andrew.net.au>
> On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 04:14:16AM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:

> > Even if we issued an empty transition kernel-image-2.6.4 to pull in
> > 2.6.6 (which is dangerous in and of itself), apt-get would not
> > actually upgrade unless it gets 'apt-get dist-upgrade'.

> However, if a newly installed stable system installed the kernel-image-2.6
> virtual package, an apt-get upgrade would upgrade the kernel if this virtual
> package subsequently depended on kernel-image-2.6.6 instead of
> kernel-image-2.6.4 (which is another spin on what you're saying above,
> anyway).

(Hm, this makes more sense if you mean "meta-package" rather than
"virtual package, right?)

Is this some new magic capability of apt-get? What exactly triggers
it?  I thought that the distinction between ordinary packages and
meta-packages was just in the heads of the developer and user (and
also in the long description), but not actually known to any of the
package-management tools.

My own experience is that 'apt-get upgrade' will just refrain from
upgrading a package if the new version depends on a package that is
not already installed on the system.

-- 
Henning Makholm            "We can hope that this serious deficiency will be
                      remedied in the final version of BibTeX, 1.0, which is
            expected to appear when the LaTeX 3.0 development is completed."