Bug#715557: apt: upgrade system is broken when a package is removed from Debian
On 2013-07-10 15:43:33 +0200, David Kalnischkies wrote:
> clang is no longer in unstable (the package – and its not the
> reason, but I wouldn't expect it to work based on that)
clang is still in unstable:
$ apt-show-versions -a clang
clang:amd64 1:3.0-6.2 install ok installed
clang:amd64 1:3.0-6.2 wheezy ftp.debian.org
No testing version
clang:amd64 1:3.2-19 unstable ftp.debian.org
No experimental version
clang:amd64/unstable 1:3.0-6.2 upgradeable to 1:3.2-19
> > Even though this appears to be a downgrade of libclang-common-dev,
> > the installation should obviously be forced in such a case.
>
> Downgrades are not supported in Debian, so its even more obvious that
> APT shouldn't actively trying to destroy your system without heavy force
> applied as old packages might be unable to read their new conf file formats,
> irreversible maintainer-script actions (which the maintainer has to code
> of course - at best bug-free as it is already done for the more common
> "upgrade" scenario), …
>
> Given that you hit this problem only if a maintainer hasn't cared too much
> for the upgradeability of the package, I wouldn't have too much hope that
> the maintainer has cared all that much for downgrades …
If you assume that's an error from the maintainer, then OK.
> Beside: Detecting this would be pretty hard and full of cornercases
> (especially as yours is already one as it crosses source-package boundaries):
> It wouldn't be that great if a package is removed from testing and the
> package gets therefore downgraded to a version from stable for example…
But this can be preferable if the removed package has security bugs
and has been removed for this reason (the user wouldn't be aware of
that with the current behavior of apt).
Perhaps another solution rather than downgrading is to warn the user
that something is wrong.
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Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
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