removal of anachronistic packages from dpkg status files

["Carlo U. Segre" <segre@charlie.acc.iit.edu>]

Package: dpkg
Version 1.1.5

I don't know if this is really a bug or not but here goes.  When I use 
dselect to install a brand new 1.1 system using the boot floopies, there 
are several packages which appear in the base installation (last, chfn, 
miscutils) which are no longer in the 1.1 tree.  In this case, they have 
been replaced by a series of different packages (utils-linux, passwd, 
login, etc).  While dpkg knows that the new packages are replacing the 
old packages, it does not uninstall all of them (particularly miscutils) 
but more importantly, if I forcibly purge them, they remain in the dpkg 
database, even though new veresions of the Packages files do not contain 
them.  

The result is that when I enter dselect, there are a bunch of 
anachronistic packages which are still listed and it is only when I use 
the "i" option that I see that there is no file available for the 
package.  This could cause serious problems for an inexperienced 
installer.  I was able to remove the references by manually editing out 
the packages from the "available" and "status" files (and their backups!) 
in the /var/lib/dpkg directory.

It is not such a big deal if you know what is going on, however it will 
become MUCH more serious when someone tires to upgrade a 0.93 system.  
Many of the packages have changed names or have been split up and only a 
very careful user will immediately figure out the difference between all 
of the ncurses packages (-bin -base -runtime ...) or the xserver-s3 and 
xs3 packages.  Not to mention that traces of old packages will remain 
forever in the database to provide additional confusion when the selected 
package is not found.

Thanks for putting up with this long-winded discussion,

Carlo


    ***********************************************************************
    *                            Carlo U. Segre                           *
    *      Department of Biological, Chemical and Physical Sciences       *
    *        Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616          *
    *   Voice: (312) 567-3498                      FAX: (312) 567-3494    *
    *                      segre@charlie.acc.iit.edu                      *
    ***********************************************************************