We can force in tetex-base, we just need a better hint

[Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>]

Frank Kuester wrote:
> Sorry, I don't understand anything.  Do you want to say that we are
> somehow tied to hevea's transition?  Why so?  
Yes, that's what he's saying.  This sort of thing is routinely hideously 
complicated.  You'll get more information from looking at update_output.txt 
at the results of the attempt to run the tetex-base hint.

This notes that the following packages go in as part of the hint:
[tetex-base,arabtex,bibtex2html,cm-super,dvipsk-ja,hevea,hlatex,latex.service,ocamlweb,tetex-bin,tipa,whizzytex,freetype1]

And it explains that the following packages get broken by a tetex-base update:
    * i386: bibtex2html, hevea, latex.service, ocaml-core, ocamlweb
    * alpha: latex.service
    * ia64: latex.service
    * mips: latex.service
    * mipsel: latex.service
    * powerpc: latex.service
    * hppa: latex.service
    * arm: latex.service
    * m68k: latex.service
    * s390: latex.service
    * sparc: latex.service

New hevea depends on new ocaml, so it breaks when it goes in.  The same 
happens with bibtex2html and ocamlweb (ocamlweb breaks ocaml-core), and 
something similar happens with latex.service which depends on new GNUStep 
libraries.

The real question is why these packages are being accepted as part of the 
hint.  Normally this would happen because new tetex breaks old hevea.  (So 
the uninstallability count doesn't change when hevea is added.)  But it 
doesn't.  Same with the others.

Ah, I see -- this is probably happening because hevea is considered before 
tetex-bin.  When tetex-base is considered without tetex-bin, this will of 
course appear to break old hevea, which depends on both (since tetex-base and 
tetex-bin *must* go in together).  Similarly all the others.

Steve, please try changing the hint as follows:
force tetex-base/3.0-13
hint tetex-base/3.0-13 tetex-bin/3.0-13

The linkage isn't real, and this should hopefully convince the testing scripts 
*not* to add new hevea (or latex.service, etc.) to the tetex-base hint.

-- 
Nathanael Nerode  <neroden@twcny.rr.com>

Read it and weep.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Text_of_Gore_speech_0116.html