Re: Planning for libidn shared library version transition
On Thu, 27 May 2021 at 16:53:45 +0200, David Kalnischkies wrote:
> So, here is a thing: I like transitional packages – because it means the
> package is not removed.
Right - it tells both apt and human users "this
replacement/removal/upgrade (depending how you look at it) is intentional,
according to the uploader of the transitional package".
For what it's worth, I think I agree that this is preferable to
Obsoletes.
> dpkg has the notion of "disappearing packages" (packages which have no
> files left on a system) which could solve this cleanup compulsion, but
> it is currently not supported (as in forbidden in practice) in Debian.
Am I correct to think that the reason this is forbidden in practice is
the requirement that every package contains either its changelog and
copyright file in /usr/share/doc/${package}/{changelog.Debian.gz,copyright},
or a symlink /usr/share/doc/${package} -> /usr/share/doc/${other}, either
of which will prevent the package from fully disappearing because the
replacement package isn't going to contain those files?
smcv
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