Summary: ======= Most of Emdebian is currently broken due to dependency issues and cannot actually be fixed because updates are uninstallable. Both problems are directly due to a transition in Debian unstable as part of the Lenny release process. Detail: ======= OK, for those who are unaware, Debian is in the midst of both a Release Freeze and a major transition - perl 5.10. (It wasn't my idea to transition perl 5.10 at this time, I'm just trying to pick up the pieces.) Some packages (like dpkg) are already frozen - new uploads will have a hard time getting into testing. Thankfully, the changes we need in dpkg made it in time and emdebian-tools has also migrated. HOWEVER, fixes for emdebian-tools are currently involved in the perl 5.10 transition and are (or will be) uninstallable as a direct result. Take a look at: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=codehelp@debian.org On the far right, the Uninstallable column should be almost completely empty (it was on Wednesday). Instead, nearly all my packages are completely uninstallable - including non-perl ones. This affects Debian unstable but it also affects Emdebian chroot scripts and upgrades. All sorts of breakages are now likely until this transition is over - mainly to do with uninstallable dependencies. Many many C packages depend on perl one way or another in Debian so all those are also affected. debconf and debhelper are currently embroiled in this transition, as are the apt perl bindings - these are the fundamental perl packages in Debian and until these can be installed, everything is broken. *** All debootstrap type operations on Debian unstable will likely fail until this transition is almost complete. cdebootstrap and equivalents are affected in precisely the same manner, including emdebian-rootfs*** *Most apt-get, synaptic or aptitude operations in unstable will FAIL* Emdebian ======== 1. I'll be migrating current Emdebian target packages (the ones for emsandbox) into Emdebian testing ASAP. These will remain and new packages uploaded will not migrate until all this chaos is resolved. 2. I'll be uploading new Emdebian target packages ASAP because I do now have fixes for gcc-4.3 and it is lintian clean. (However, that process showed up a few bugs in the tools because gcc-4.3 only builds successfully inside a clean cross-building chroot for some - as yet unidentified - reason.) 3. There will be updates to emdebian-tools but I'm not sure how I'll manage those - the tools are currently uninstallable alongside almost every perl package in Debian but upgrades may be possible. I have a problem with debhelper >= 7.0.4 which is also involved in this mess because my main systems have upgraded but chroots now cannot. The problem comes down to how often you update your systems and your chroots. Old chroots not updated since about Wednesday evening are borked - you will find dozens of uninstallable packages and dependencies. New chroots updated since Wednesday will have some updates but also include a broken update that breaks parts of emdebian-tools and which now cannot be fixed because the affected packages cannot be installed. This feeds into debootstrap and friends too - when packages are uninstallable in Debian unstable, it becomes impossible to create new debootstap images from Debian unstable and therefore impossible to create new chroots as well as upgrade old ones. This is why I will be trying to maintain the current (installable but buggy) target packages in Emdebian testing in a pristine state whilst the temporarily uninstallable but less buggy updated packages go into Emdebian unstable. Everything is just so broken that it is going to be hard to keep things working. Please don't complain about uninstallability issues - there is nothing anyone in Emdebian can do to resolve these problems. You simply have to wait until this transition is completed in Debian unstable. Note that when this transition is finally complete, Emdebian needs to have ALL the relevant packages UPDATED because perl 5.10 will immediately migrate into Debian testing with all the new packages. I will be taking advantage of this chaos by uploading as many fixed packages as I possibly can into Emdebian unstable and although I've been the only one doing that so far, I would ask those with upload privileges NOT to upload anything to the target repository or change anything in the target repository (buildd.emdebian.org/emdebian) [/var/emdebian/emdebian/ on ant] without checking with me first for each individual package / change. During this time, I will be using standard Emdebian / Debian QA tools to try to ensure that the Emdebian uploads are installable but the unstable repository as a whole is likely to remain completely unusable depending on how the transition in Debian affects debootstap. I will try to upload EXISTING builds wherever possible and use old chroots where I can, replacing with updated builds only when absolutely unavoidable. If you are building Emdebian packages or using Emdebian target packages for root filesystems, expect Debian unstable to remain broken until the perl 5.10 transition is almost complete and expect breakage in Emdebian unstable as well from time to time. AFAICT emdebian-tools and direct dependencies are not affected by perl 5.10 directly but until the indirect dependencies are fixed in Debian (especially libaptpkg-perl) the tools are likely to remain uninstallable. In cases where you have emdebian-tools >= 1.0.0 and you want my updates for 1.0.3 and later, if the package is uninstallable you can "force" things by copying files out of SVN and into place. NOTE: there is one proviso with this - keep emdebian-tools_1.0.0_all.deb (and the other binaries built from the same source) around so that you can reinstall it if the direct copy breaks things. I cannot make any assurance that such copying will actually work - all I can say is that I will try to ensure that my future commits to SVN work at least on my own (broken) systems and in my (non-broken) chroots but, right now, that is not true - so take care. If you have the option, I would recommend avoiding Debian unstable until this perl transition is complete. Most of the tools have some kind of testing support but it might not be complete. However, I'm afraid that you are stuck with what you currently have as far as testing is concerned - anything that is currently broken in testing will remain broken until this whole mess is fixed in Debian. You might be able to copy some code from SVN but I am unable to test this configuration so I can't realistically expect to provide fixes for such configurations within SVN itself. I'll see about making my existing root filesystem .tgz available for download but they are quite old (and buggy). New .tgz files are unlikely to be possible during this transition - not much anyone can do about that now. There simply wasn't time to make any preparations for this transition - it followed immediately from the python-2.5 transition. Right now, Debian unstable is not so much unstable as 99% uninstallable. What you have will work with the same bugs as before - getting those bugs fixed is likely to be impossible during this transition. Sorry. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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