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Re: stable-->testing report



Colin Watson wrote:


 
> Some are packages removed/renamed since stable:
> 
>   * freetype2-dev -> libttf-dev
>   * librpm1 -> librpm0
>   * libwmf0-dev -> libwmf-dev
>   * netscape4 -> netscape-*-477
>   * pnmtopng -> netpbm
>   * tetex-lib -> libkpathsea3
>   * tetex-nonfree
>   * xcontrib -> xbase-clients
>   * xlib6g-dev -> xlibs-dev
>   * xpm4g -> xlibs
>   * xpm4g-dev -> xlibs-dev


there should be a way to observe and resolve this changes somewhat more
semi-automatically when doing a dist-upgrade. Same to the problem of
multple cycles of upgrade/install/dpkg --configure -a e.a. IMHO. I've
been dealing with this since upgrading from hamm to potato to
woody/testing and it hasn't changed. Having some experience doing these
dist-upgrades i can usually work around the problems, but Joe Average
won't be able to do the dist upgrade without getting stuck, or loosing
some packages due to reorganisation of contents. It would help a lot for
public use (and of course for publicity) if dist-upgrades would happen
more pleasant.

As apt is explicitely equipped with "dist-upgrade" one could expect this
to work this way (as man page says: "smart" conflict resolution,
intelligently handles changing dependencies). Some questions and
suggestions:

-Is there any work in progress to do some recursivas during upgrade?

-Can  the inconvenience with renamed packages be reduced by using pseudo
packages with the old name, with depencies on the new one? When an old
programm/packages to remove comes with a bunch of others in a new
package, then at least ther should be an default sugesstion set where
you do not loose functionality after upgrade.

-When packages do no longer belong to distro, there should be a more
informative message for packaged getting removed during dist-upgrade. Of
course this could be written to an README.upgrage or such.

Gerhard



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