Re: vim on powerpc
Hello,
On Sat, 2025-10-11 at 14:38 -0600, Stan Johnson wrote:
> Thanks for your reply. Note that vim didn't disappear from Debian SID
> (sysvinit).
Simon didn't say that vim disappeared and that's also not what happened.
The problem is that the vim source package didn't build on powerpc and
several architectures due to testsuite failures, see:
https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=vim&suite=sid
Since the vim source package builds both packages of the "all" architecture,
i.e. architecture-independent packages as well as the "any" architecture,
i.e. of a specific architecture such as powerpc, both need to be in sync
for the package to be installable.
When you install "vim" on powerpc, you need the "vim" package with the
architecture powerpc as well as the "vim-common" package with the
architecture "all".
The architecture "all" package was built successfully and hence the
available version is now 2:9.1.1846-1 while the latest available version
for powerpc in unstable is 2:9.1.1230-2.
Since the versions have to match, apt removed "vim" when you (blindly)
upgraded "vim-common" to it's latest version. Hence, you should never
blindly run dist-upgrades on unstable to avoid these issues.
For the release architectures, the problem is relieved by the fact that
the Debian package archive software (DAK) automatically recognizes when
packages become out of sync and keeps the old versions of the dependencies
to keep the packages installable. The feature is called "cruft" and doesn't
exist in Debian Ports which uses the archive software "Mini DAK".
Please see also this mailing list post where I wrote a similar explanation
for library dependencies:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2017/12/msg00060.html
In the future, you should be careful when running "apt dist-upgrade" and
not just press <ENTER> without checking first which packages would be
removed by the update.
You should have marked "vim-common" as "hold" in this case:
# apt-mark hold vim-common
Then run "apt dist-upgrade".
> Since unstable is our only option for powerpc, I'll either
> try build vim (or vim-tiny) as you suggested, or use traditional vi.
There is no need for a manual build. Just download vim-common in the
version 2:9.1.1230-2 from snapshot.debian.org:
https://snapshot.debian.org/package/vim/2%3A9.1.1230-2/#vim-common_2:3a:9.1.1230-2
i.e.:
# wget https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20250523T023803Z/pool/main/v/vim/vim-common_9.1.1230-2_all.deb
# dpkg -i vim-common_9.1.1230-2_all.deb
then reinstall vim with:
# apt install vim
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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