On Vi, 12 feb 21, 17:00:41, Gary Dale wrote:
Which is why I think it would be useful to have way to rollback a
package
when you can't fix it quickly. That way you aren't asking all the
users to
do it themselves and track the bug status individually. When the
maintainers
think they have a fix, it can go through the normal process...
Debian doesn't support downgrading of packages.
When dpkg installs another version of a package (typically newer)
it
basically overwrites the existing version and runs the
corresponding
package scripts from the to be installed version.
A newer package may introduce changes that the older package
(scripts)
can't deal with. In practice it does work in many cases, except for
those where it doesn't. Fixing them would require a time machine ;)
A roll-back, especially if automatic, could introduce more issues
than
it fixes.
Someone(tm) has to determine on a case by case basis whether
rolling
back makes sense and the system administrator is in the best
position to
do so.
In theory the package Maintainer could provide a general "hint"
that
system administrators could chose to ignore (at their own risk).
Currently the infrastructure for this doesn't exist[1] and,
besides, I'd
rather have Maintainers focus on fixing the newer package instead.
Volunteer time is precious!
[1] it would need support in the Debian archive software and APT at
a
minimum.
Besides, there is already an arguably safer (though hackish) way to
achieve that by uploading a package with
version+really.the.old.version
instead.
In this case the Maintainer can also take care to adjust the
package
scripts accordingly.
Random example found on my system:
$ rmadison fonts-font-awesome
fonts-font-awesome | 4.2.0~dfsg-1 |
oldoldstable | source, all
fonts-font-awesome | 4.7.0~dfsg-1 |
oldstable | source, all
fonts-font-awesome | 5.0.10+really4.7.0~dfsg-1 |
stable | source, all
fonts-font-awesome | 5.0.10+really4.7.0~dfsg-4~bpo10+1 | buster-
backports | source, all
fonts-font-awesome | 5.0.10+really4.7.0~dfsg-4 |
testing | source, all
fonts-font-awesome | 5.0.10+really4.7.0~dfsg-4 |
unstable | source, all
Kind regards,
Andrei