Re: Increasing number of conflicts
Hi, Alexander:
On Monday 19 April 2010 15:16:02 B. Alexander wrote:
> I've got an issue with a sid box that I have been maintaining for a while.
> This is my workstation, and I have noticed a growing number of broken
> packages, unmet dependencies and conflicts. I have been using safe-upgrade
> for months now, hoping that it would work itself out over time.
It won't. That's not the way Sid works.
On Sid packages can come and go. Since 'safe-upgrade' won't uninstall
packages, once you enter a "dead end" on Sid, it won't go away by itself: you
will need to uninstall those packages and after that install the new
versions, probably with new dependencies, old dependencies trashed away, etc.
On Sid you are expected to go the "full-upgrade" path and do it both wisely
and often.
"Wisely" because, not as in Stable, you can't just "blindly" upgrade
everything, but you will want to cherrypick this or that based on its
current "breakability" status (i.e.: you follow debian-devel list and learn
that currently, say, libc, or KDE is almost broken and heavily updated, so
you may decide to stay away from them. After some weeks, those become
more "palatable" but then it's the time for Openoffice to go "fun", etc.).
"Often" because if you let the system to "rot" for few months or even few
weeks, you end up with a nightmare of packages to work with instead of only
a few you can manage easier (that's the case for the system you outline in
your post).
So, with Sid, you should test for a "full-upgrade" almost daily. Then you may
decide to upgrade by hand only a subset you feel more comfortable with and
then, even for such a subset you may need to uninstall (or let the system
unistall) some packages and after the fact you'll need to reinstall them
manually to let the system recompute new needs, dependencies, etc.
Cheers.
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