Re: Is it safe to install xz-utils?
On 2009-08-11 03:35 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> When I want to install xz-utils (from experimental) on a Debian/unstable
> machine, apt-get wants to remove lzma because xz-utils conflicts with it.
That's the reason why it was uploaded to experimental, I suppose.
> I get the following warning:
>
> WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed.
> This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
> lzma (due to dpkg)
>
> However xz-utils provides lzma, so I don't see what could be wrong.
> So, is it OK?
Probably. The worst case scenario is that it doesn't work and you are
no longer be able to unpack lzma-compressed debs. But that should not
really happen if the maintainers have tested their package.
Technically, since dpkg Pre-Depends on lzma, this means that it could
(theoretically) be not functional during the time that lzma is removed,
but xz-utils is not yet installed. In practice this is not an issue,
though.
> Since lzma has been replaced by xz-utils upstream, shouldn't xz-utils
> be essential instead of lzma?
When it finally gets uploaded to unstable, there needs to be a
transitional lzma package that Pre-Depends on xz-utils to facilitate a
smooth transition. But I don't know about the maintainers' plans.
Sven
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