Re: apt-get problem workaround... is this a bug?

[Jorge Santos <jsf@dep3.fciencias.unam.mx>]

"Paul D. Smith" <pausmith@nortelnetworks.com> writes:

> %% Jorge Santos <jsf@dep3.fciencias.unam.mx> writes:
> 
>   >> Looking through the APT bug reports, I think this bug has been fixed in
>   >> apt 0.5.4, uploaded to unstable around Aug 20.
>   >> 
>   >> Unfortunately, it still hasn't migrated into testing, and when I tried
>   >> to grab it from unstable it wanted to pull too many other unstable
>   >> packages for me to be comfortable with.
> 
>   js> http://ftp-master.debian.org/testing/update_excuses.html
> 
> I'm stumped.
> 
> According to the excuses, there's no reason for APT to not be moved to
> "testing", as long as it doesn't depend on broken packages.
> 
> Well, apt-search shows that the unstable version of APT (0.5.4) has
> these depends:
> 
>   Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.3-7), libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2
> 
> Now, on my "testing" system right now I already have
> libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 installed, so that's no problem.
> 
> And, I have libc6 2.2.4-1, which is definitely >= 2.2.3-7.

Idem here.

And what's more important, those are the packages currently in
testing, it seems to me.

> 
> So, I have no idea whatsoever why APT 0.5.4 hasn't migrated into testing
> yet...
> 

So the problem may be one of two then:

1. The policy for getting packages from unstable to testing for some
reason doesn't consider apt.

3. The scripts implementing the policy are buggy.

If the first the buggy packages that are keeping apt out of testing
should be fixed.
If the second the scripts should be fixed.

So the first step is determining which of the two is the problem and
the second is fixing it.

So I think someone should be informed of this in case nobody has
noticed it (I guess what we are doing isn't all that common or the
problem affects a very sepecific set of configurations).  But who and
in what way?

jorge santos