Re: Important information regarding upcoming dpkg 1.16.2 upload

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

On Mon, 2012-03-19 at 08:12:08 +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > In addition selections for packages unknown to dpkg will not be
> > accepted anymore.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand this correctly but I'm afraid that this is a
> serious regression.
> 
> It has always been possible to sort-of "duplicate" a system by doing
> "dpkg --get-selections >file" on one computer and running "dpkg
> --set-selections <file" on another computer followed by an "apt-get
> dselect-upgrade".
> 
> This requires that dpkg accepts the selection for packages that it
> doesn't know about (but that apt knows).

Which has always been wrong, it's the equivalent of expecting apt to
accept operations on unknown packages. dpkg should really not accept
random junk on --set-selections. The implication of this is just that
if the available file is not getting updated, then it needs get synced
back before setting the selections with one of the several methods:

  dselect update
  sync-available
  apt-cache dumpavail && dpkg --update-avail / --merge-avail

I don't see how that's too onerous, for a more reliable operation. In
addition the users will get a nice warning for unavailable packages.

regards,
guillem