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Bug#649240: Upcoming upgrade issues with GNU Screen for Wheezy



On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 11:56:25 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 05:24:34PM +0000, Justin B Rye wrote:
> > > Axel Beckert wrote:
> > >> Possible suggestions for the release notes: Use tmux instead of screen
> > >> for the dist-upgrade. Not really a laudable note for screen, but I
> > >> have currently no better idea.
> 
> > Would it make sense to recommend putting screen on hold and upgrading
> > it separately after the dist-upgrade is finished?  That wouldn't work
> > for something like udev or gdm3, but it sounds like the simplest
> > strategy for a "leaf" package like screen.
> 
> > (We'll need material for the release notes eventually, but first
> > screen 4.1.0 is obviously going to need to put some warnings and
> > recommendations in a NEWS.Debian file.)
> 
> Any such mitigation strategies will be a poor substitute for having screen
> actually work properly across upgrades.  There is nowhere that we can put
> such a recommendation that we can ensure users will see it before they start
> the upgrade; and once they've started the upgrade inside of a screen
> session, it's too late to put the package on hold / start the upgrade
> outside of screen / do anything at all except hope you don't have to
> reattach to the screen to answer the debconf/conffile prompts and complete
> the upgrade.
> 
> Given that in other quarters I'm consistently hearing that screen has
> stagnated and been overtaken by tmux, it's incredibly bad form for the new
> upstream version to have broken protocol compatibility like this.  I think
> the screen maintainer should insist on upstream fixing protocol
> compatibility before allowing this version into unstable.
> 
Did this stuff ever get fixed?  screen's NEWS.Debian suggests it isn't,
which I find rather annoying.  Said NEWS file also recommends
downloading and running code from a random web server as root, which
really doesn't seem appropriate, even in the context of this bug.  If
this is indeed the state of screen in wheezy I'm thinking it'd be better
to go back to the previous (pre-compatibility-break) version.

Cheers,
Julien

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