Santiago Vila wrote:
On Mon, 17 Jan 2005, Anthony Towns wrote:Each package Conflicts with the package it replaces with a version << the future dummy transition version of the existing packages and Replaces the old package as well. For example:I'm fairly sure the above should ensure you don't need any dummy packages, and gain all the benefits you were aiming for.The point is not about "needing" dummy packages or not.
Well, yes it is -- they're not there for their own sake, they're there to ensure upgrades happen smoothly and automatically. If they're not *necessary* for that, they're not useful -- any other way of achieving it is better.
The point is whether dummy packages are useful, and yes, they are useful indeed. Unless things have changed recently, dselect does *not* select a new package to be installed, no matter how many Conflicts:/Provides:/Replaces: on the old package it has.
We really need to get dpkg/apt and dselect/aptitude working as designed. Not supporting auto-selecting packages like this, in spite of it having been documented for years, is just embarassing.
So yes, we *need* dummy packages for upgrades to be smooth.
Although given the -tools and -dev packages have already been renamed from libvips7.8-tools to libvips7.10-tools without bothering with dummy packages, there's not much point starting now.
Cheers, aj