Bug#645579: apt-get upgrade keeps upgradable package
Hi David,
I have CC'd the m17n-contrib maintainer on this message too.
David Kalnischkies wrote:
> first of all: Thanks for your detailed bugreport!
Thanks! I tried to include the information that I would want when
receiving such a report.
> "Unfortunately" I have to say that this "new" behavior is not a bug…
Thanks for taking the time to look into the problem. As long as the
reasoning behind it makes sense then that is fine. It didn't make
sense to me and looked like a deeper problem. (It still looks like it
to me. But I hope to get past that point.)
> > Control files: lines which differ (wdiff format)
> > ------------------------------------------------
> > Depends: m17n-db (>= [-1.5.0)-] {+1.6.3)+}
> > Description: [-a-] multilingual text processing library - contributed database
> > Installed-Size: [-1400-] {+1184+}
> > Recommends: libm17n-0 (>= [-1.5.0)-] {+1.6.3)+}
> > Version: [-1.1.12-2-] {+1.1.13-1+}
>
> The Recommends here is the bad thing:
> Currently libm17n-0 is only available in 1.6.2-3 -
> this means with an upgrade of m17n-contrib now we would break
> a previously satisfied Recommends which means the user might loose
> functionality without expecting it
I am sorry but I am still not quite understanding this point. And I
would like to understand it. Please bear with me for a moment longer.
I have libm17n-0 1.6.2-3 installed. It should satisfy both the old
and the new Recommends since both are ">=" relationships. Right? And
it seems to do so okay. I can install either version of m17n-contrib
without any dependency breakage.
Also this seems to be a very common pattern for a lot of packages and
if it is a problem then it should be causing the problem very often.
They upgrade their version number and the version number of packages
they Depend and Recommend. If that is a problem for apt then I would
have expected to have seen it a lot. But instead this is the only
time I can ever remember having run into this behavior out of all of
the years.
> as 'upgrade' should be really conservative with a motto like: "Just
> get bugfixes, not new issues".
I am in complete agreement. I am a big advocate of the Stable
release. But I am running Sid in order to see and diagnose problems
earlier than the Stable release cycle. :-)
In this case isn't 'upgrade' maintained? The list of names of the
packages installed would be exactly the same both before and after.
Only the version number of exactly one package is increased. Isn't
that a safe upgrade?
I see that you are telling me that it is not that part but the
recommends version part that is the issue. But again there isn't a
change in name but only a change in version and that should be okay
for a safe upgrade shouldn't it?
> (This carefulness regarding policy-breakage was introduced in 0.8.15.3)
All good.
> If you wouldn't install Recommends by default or you don't have
> libm17n-0 installed 'apt-get upgrade' would have the same result as
> 'dist-upgrade' as there is no policy to break, as it was already broken
> and therefore we don't have to fear that the user will loose functionality
> as it was already lost.
But libm17n-0 is installed in both cases. If the new package added a
recommends then I could see what you are saying. But it only upgrades
the version of the recommends. The recommends exists in both the old
and new packages.
I am sure you are not saying that any package with a recommends is not
a candidate for a safe upgrade. But that is what I am reading and so
I am confused.
> (There is also no concept of less or more broken, policy breakage handling
> is binary, either it's broken or not, so if just one Recommends or twenty
> are missing is no difference for the "policy breakage detector")
Okay with that. I am still back at the beginning try to understand
why it is broken. :-)
> That we have no debug message telling us something like this is a bumper
> through, so followup versions will have a lovely debug-message added:
> Policy breaks with upgrade of foobar < x.y -> x.y.z >
> Thanks for the suggestion!
I was trying to turn on verbose debug output but there wasn't a straw
to grasp at. :-) I was just asking if there was a debug flag that
could be used to debug it further. More debug info is good.
> Thanks also for your report again and sorry for closing it as
> not-a-bug-but-a-feature, but i hope it get clear with this
> description. If not feel free to ask/reopen it.
I can't tell you how many times I have closed a new bug report as not
a bug and so I know exactly how you feel. Sometimes I just tag them
as moreinfo and then come back later and close them after more
interaction. But that is a lot more work.
Bob
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