Bug#198392: apt: downgrading of a paket badly solved or described
Package: apt
Version: 0.5.5.1
Severity: normal
Hi !
I struggled with apt for so many times, when i tried to downgrade a
paket - so now I decided to write a report.
Apt-get IMHO is the most advanced package-system for unix-environments,
and I liked and used it for years.....this means that you did a good :-))
But there is one thing which is quite suboptimal - a example:
I decided to upgrade the xfree-stuff of my system - and
I do a regular upgrade of this software. Now I discover that this xfree-release
contains a a bug which makes my system unusable.
Now it would be better to downgrade that package, to get a working system.
But how can i downgrade a package without uninstalling it ?
A "apt-get install <mypackage> --target-release <oldversion>" will not help -
i get the answer that the package is still up2date.
My first intension is now to get the package manually, and to install this package.
But this is not easy erverytime - because if that xfree-stuff is defined as a
dependency of other packages (i.e. window-managers) - this is very unconfortable.
I don't know if "dpkg --force-downgrade" is a solution of this problem, but I often
purged that paket, and installed the roght release.
An option to do get a certain release by resolving the dependencies
automatically, would be very cool :-)
If this is not easy to implement, or if this is not conform with the design of
apt - it would be very useful to offer a solution to this problem in the manpage.
Best regards
Marc Schoechlin
-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux dragan 2.4.20 #1 Son Dez 22 18:54:47 CET 2002 i686
Locale: LANG=de_DE, LC_CTYPE=de_DE@euro
Versions of packages apt depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.1-16 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii libgcc1 1:3.3-2 GCC support library
ii libstdc++5 1:3.3-2 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
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