Re: dist-upgrade strangeness: dependencies not deconfigured

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Guillem Jover writes ("Re: dist-upgrade strangeness: dependencies not deconfigured"):
> The much maligned dselect frontend has managed w/o any force option,
> and unfortunately only somwhat recently I reasinged bug reports to apt
> (#579790) and cupt (#575786 which I need to follow up on) to request
> they switch to use selections too.

I have been using dpkg-ftp for a long time now and this supports what
Guillem says.  (Sadly I don't feel like updating things for multi-arch
so it looks like I'm going to have to switch to apt.)

I have encountered occasional situations where the packages' declared
dependencies absolutely prevent the upgrade.  Typically something like
this:

On system (previous versions):

    Package: A
    Version: 1

    Package: B
    Version: 1

In archive (new versions):

    Package: A
    Version: 2
    Conflicts: B (<< 2)

    Package: B
    Version: 2
    Conflicts: A (<< 2)

But now that we have Breaks, maintainers rarely write that any more.
And I think all of these situations are bugs in the dependencies.
(Or as Guillem says, in apt.)

Ian.