On Mon, Oct 30, 2000 at 09:22:02AM +1100, Brian May wrote:
> I can't help but think though that this indicates a bigger problem
> in our reliance on maintainer scripts - it is not possible to add new
> features without:
>
> - hard-coding the entire feature in the maintainer script
>
> AND/OR
>
> - depending on another package which codes the feature.
>
> Not sure on the best solution. Here is one that comes to mind:
Yes, this seems to be a general problem. How about the following
solution? A bit messy, but might work, maybe with modifications.
Have a distribution called "upgrade-prereq" (pointing to
upgrade-prereq-woody initially) which contains the package
upgrade-prereq and any *major* packages which are necessary for a
significant number of packages from testing/unstable to work. These
would have to be compiled on a stable system, so that they can be
installed on a stable system. Then we would have to educate users
(debian(-devel)-announce) that for partial upgrades, one must add the
upgrade-prereq distribution to the /etc/apt/sources.list and install
the package upgrade-prereq. This package would have versioned depends
on all of the packages in the upgrade-prereq distribution.
Examples of packages which would be suitable for the upgrade-prereq
distribution:
dpkg for such things as dpkg-log
apt if a new version is needed to handle something special
man-db for partial upgrades to potato (FHS issue)
We could even make upgrade-prereq an essential package in the stable
distribution which depends upon the correct versions of these
packages, and somehow (how?) ensure that when upgrading the
distribution, the upgrade-prereq package is upgraded first, pulling in
the versions of the key packages needed for the upgrade.
Does this sound at all reasonable?
Julian
--
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Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
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