Scott Kitterman wrote:

> KDE in Karmic uses XZ for lzma support.   I use it fairly frequently for
> decompressing lzma .debs without apparent problems.

Thanks for the comment.  That is what I am most afraid of.

If xz-utils is upgraded to the version in testing, the upgraded
xz-utils would not include the lzma symlink.  That’s the point of the
upgrade: it is not good practice for xz-utils to conflict with lzma,
because lzma is essential.

To upgrade xz-utils, the user would be without an lzma command for the
few moments between when new xz-utils is unpacked and when the lzma
package is unpacked.  If lzma is needed during that time (for example,
to unpack an lzma-compressed .deb), then whatever it is needed for
fails.

Of course, apt will warn about this in advance.

In Debian, the only versions of xz-utils that included the lzma
symlink were in experimental.  Users of experimental are expected to
be able to recover from this kind of breakage.  If Ubuntu packagers
had asked me what the status of the package was then, I would have
said “wait”.  (I also could have pointed to a newer version of the
package, even then.)  Well, one can’t turn back time.

In Debian squeeze+1 (or squeeze with luck), a new xz-lzma package will
be provided with the /usr/bin/lzma -> xz symlink.  This becomes
possible as soon as dpkg stops depending on lzma, making the command
not essential any more.

Hope that helps,
Jonathan

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sync request (testing or unstable -> karmic/main)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/528850
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