Re: [Fink-devel] Use-binary-dist flakiness

[Dave Vasilevsky]

On Jun 29, 2005, at 8:07 AM, Martin Costabel wrote:

Using a local server for unstable debs, I have a long-standing quibble with apt-get: It often doesn't understand that a package is already installed and "apt-get dist-upgrade" downloads and installs many packages, sometimes hundreds of packages, whose exact same version is already installed. I have complained about this on the lists and have a bug tracker item open, but apparently no one else understands this either, although it has been observed by others already years ago, at least every time a new bindist comes out.

Martin,

We know that this happens, and it kinda sucks. But I've never been able to figure it out exactly. I usually end up accidentally letting an apt-get upgrade finish, and then the problem goes away. Since I don't know how to reproduce it, it just leaves me kinda confused and without any way to test further. If anybody can reproduce it consistently, please tell me how so I can debug it.

I have a symmetrical problem with fink --use-binary-dist: It very often, and apparently randomly, refuses to use the binary dist, although the package it is going to install does exist there.

[snip]

I have *not* experienced this problem, I'd like some more information.





Commands that would be useful are:

uname -a
fink -V
find /sw/fink/dists/ -name fink.info | xargs grep Version
apt-cache policy fink



Dave

Note first that the --use-binary-dist option to fink (or in fink.conf) will only get packages from the bindist that exist BOTH as .info files and in the bindist. This restriction makes things easier on Fink and should generally not be a problem, but it may be the cause of your issue. Please verify! If this is not your problem, could you please tell your users that if they observe fink starting to buildthings at this stage instead of downloading, to stop it immediately, run a few commands, and send you the output; that way we can look at what's going on. And any others you can think of including. Hopefully we can figure out what's going on.

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