Bug#387561: libffi package is long since obsolete, but libffi4-dev could Conflict: with it
On Fri, Sep 15, 2006 at 07:30:45PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> "Kevin B. McCarty" <kmccarty@Princeton.EDU> writes:
>
> > ...note that 2001 was before the release of woody. This package is so
> > old that it shouldn't still be on anyone's system and Debian doesn't
> > actually need to support it. (The submitter may want to check for
> > "Obsolete and locally created packages" in aptitude once in a while.)
> > I'm guessing libffi4-dev maintainers will just close this bug.
>
> This is incorrect reasoning.
>
> Old packages do not get automatically deleted, and there's no reason
> to think this one would have been.
>
> Thomas
I suppose from the version numbering the intent may have been to allow
multiple versions to coexist. Unfortunately, it seems the latest one
and the very early one can't coexist, so I guess they need to
conflict.
I don't know the dependency mechanism well enough to know whether a
simple conflict entry is sufficient to resolve the problem.
Ross
P.S. Since libffi is no longer on my system, I can't check what
category is was classified under. I'm using apt-get rather than
aptitude, and the former is much less aggressive about culling
unneeded packages. However, it appears that the previous version of
gnucash and supporting libs did require libffi--at least, removing
libffi required removing the old gnucash.
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