Branden Robinson: > [...] > Only now do you seem to be concerned. No, this has been a frequently asked question for some time in debian-user. I should probably add it to the Debian FAQ.
Please, note that I'm not blaming you for not having thought about this problem *in advance*. I just want to see it solved in *whatever* way. > [...] > > Upgrading a system from hamm to slink should make the system to be in the > > same state as if slink had been installed from scratch. > > > > Otherwise, Debian will become just a W95 clone very soon (have you ever > > asked yourself why people reinstall W95 so often?). > > This is a straw-man argument. Isolate one criterion -- if we don't meet > that by YOUR standard, we're no better than Windows 95. The W95 case was just an example. The upgrade *should* be smooth. This is not my criterion, it is one of the things that Debian has promised to our users, and it is something the users expect from us. > [...] > I reiterate my challenge. Demonstrate to me a manner in which a > hamm system upgraded to slink, which keeps the old X font and static > library packages, will be broken. Well, I have already said that the fact that the harm is not immediate does not mean that it is less broken. However, if you want something immediate, here it is: dselect will show the old packages as being "obsolete". This will cause a lot of confusion, a lot of questions to answer and a lot of time lost for everybody. And of course a lot of fear about Debian, since people will think that we change names gratuitously without a good reason to do so, and more important, without implementing a good renaming mechanism *first* in dpkg. Are you trying to tell me that it is *better* that the X packages do *not* upgrade automatically? (I hope not). Put it simply: You have, as X maintainer, the right to rename the packages as you want. However, once they are renamed, we have a problem, they do not upgrade automatically, as everybody expects. Then we have two choices: 1. Do whatever we can with existing tools so that the X packages are effectively automatically upgraded. 2. Do nothing. Is your word final in that you are not convinced that we should make whatever is needed to ensure that the X packages are automatically upgraded, as the rest of the system is? [ Maybe I should post an "intent to package" message then and stop this discussion ]. Thanks. -- "a378a07a477f4abbab1735772121291f" (a truly random sig)