Re: RELEASE NOTE (suggestion)

[Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 02:42:20AM -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Hi Osamu,
> 
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 03:07:30AM +0900, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> 
> > In 4.4.2 Upgrading aptitude
> 
> > You only updating aptitude.
> > 
> > I think updating tasksel (hence tasksel-data) together will make less
> > surprise.  (Proper Desktop task list ...)
> 
> > -     # aptitude install aptitude
> > +     # aptitude install aptitude tasksel
> 
> Why would it be important to install tasksel before dist-upgrading?  tasksel
> isn't called directly in the upgrade process, and I don't think aptitude
> dist-upgrade looks at tasks either, does it?

I do not think I said "important".  I just *suggested* this since I
thought it is a *good* idea to "make less surprise" under unpredictable
upgrade breakage.  I mean this is zero liability action with reduction
of possible negative situation.

Here is a bit more explanation.  As stated in 4.4.2, "In some cases if a
large number of packages is listed for removal", this is what I fear.
Of course if your KDE fix trick closes the gap completely and "aptitude
-f --with-recommends dist-upgrade" nicely upgrade system without
interactive work, my fear may be non-significant one. 

But an user may have installed some funny set of non-desktop programs
which we did not tested (tetex?) and it may create problem.  Current
aptitude as released for etch will have important and difficult to fix
bug before release for dist-upgrade.  

See http://bugs.debian.org/391377 .  

Whoever hits such a bug will try to resolve it relying on aptitude's
interactive mode to solve situation.  If we do not update tasksel-data,
the menu under tasks does not seem to have reasonable appearance for
desktop task etc.  So we can focus on addressing real issue.

By upgrading with tasksel, aptitude does not suffer this draw back.

Also, installing aptitude will pull in new libc and then pull in many
other programs.  Just adding tasksel which has least impact in terms of
dependency but gives peace of minds to the aptitude user with reasonable
many screen choices will be good idea.

Osamu

PS: I do not remember my chroot upgrade test exactly but if tasksel was
not upgraded together, User task did not have KDE and Gnome. Language
task was funny too.