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Re: utnubu-desktop for the masses



On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 11:20:04AM -0700, Mike Bird wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-04-23 at 11:06, Florian Weimer wrote:
> > > Ideally, tasksel would be changed to use the dependencies of
> > > any meta package WITHOUT installing the meta package.
> > 
> > This doesn't address the issues with testing migration at all.
> 
> Maybe I'm a slow learner.  How does adding a package with a few
> hundred unversioned dependencies and no reverse dependencies
> slow down anything but itself?

Hmmm... I'm not an expert but I think it goes like this:

- metapackage in 'testing' which (unversioned) depends: A and B 
  (in testing A, version 1, and B, version 1, get along together)
- The maintainers decide that, for sid, A will have new functionality
  that makes it replace B. So, in sid, A (v2) conflicts: with B (v1)

In this situation, unless the metapackage is updated to reflect that change
then A could not get into testing without breaking the metapackage (and the
migration scripts would prevent that unless forced^Whinted to do so).

If the maintainers managing the packages and meta-packages don't sync their
work there is going to be breakage because of the later. The above is a
simple example but things can easily get more complicated with metapackages
that depend on *lots* of other packages. Users end up having to remove the
meta-package (either manually, or because apt says so), losing the benefits
they provide.

Just my 2c

Javier

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