Bug#758153: apt: support for versioned Provides

[Niko Tyni <ntyni@debian.org>]

Package: apt
Version: 1.0.6
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

dpkg (1.17.11) unstable; urgency=low
[...]
* Add versioned Provides support:
    - Add a new dpkg --assert-versioned-provides command.
    - Packages can provide a specific version, “virtual (= 1.0)” which will
      be honored, previously it would just be accepted when parsing.       
    - Non-versioned virtual packages will not satisfy versioned dependencies.
    - Versioned virtual packages will satisfy non-versioned dependencies.    
    Based on skeletal code by Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org>.         
    Closes: #7330, #24934, #112131, #134582, #180316            

I assume that this is not supported by apt yet, as I didn't find any
mention of it in the changelogs. It would be great if such support could
be added.

We've had to implement a big bunch of workarounds in the perl package
over the years due to the lack of versioned provides and would certainly
switch over as soon as it would be practical.

Thanks for your work on apt,
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni@debian.org