reopen 563895 thanks [I don't like playing ping-pong with "close" and "reopen" but in this case I think you misunderstood the environment]
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 2:17 PM, Santiago Vila <sanv...@unex.es> wrote: > In testing and unstable, diff is now a dummy package which depends on > diffutils. That is the intended reason for diffutils to be installed, > not the fact that it's a new essential package. > > Also, please note that if you have unstable in sources.list and, as > you say, do a dist-upgrade, then for all purposes you are no longer > running "lenny". I'm running pure lenny + latest cacti from unstable (a _noarch package). >> However, I realized that this package is not a part of >> lenny and I uninstalled. > > So, I assume you know what you are doing and are brave enough to > uninstall an essential package. Good. Again, diffutils is an essential package on squeeze/sid but not on lenny. Here I have lenny installed with diff being essential and providing 'diff', 'cmp' and other essential tools. >> The problem is that the binary '/usr/bin/diff' is >> now missing but is a part of 'diff=2.8.1-12' from lenny too. > > Aha, you are brave enough to uninstall an essential package and mix > stable and unstable (which is normally not supported), but not brave > enough to remove the diff package that no longer contains /usr/bin/diff > and reinstall it again: > > dpkg --purge diff (use also --force-remove-essential if required) > apt-get install diff=2.8.1-12 > > Well, I don't buy this. Either you know what you are doing, or you don't. > If you do, you should be prepared to fix this for yourself, as the > package system, in general, does not support "downgrades". If you > don't, you should not be mixing stable and unstable to begin with. I didn't upgrade 'diff', nor uninstalled it. It remains installed as an essential package. galileo:~# cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/release APT::Default-Release "stable"; Due to the above configuration no other packages are upgraded to unstable/sid except those manually upgraded before (only cacti in this case). >> In conclussion something is missing from 'diffutils' to force uninstall or >> upgrade of diff<=2.8.1-12 from lenny. I don't know if Breaks: or Conflict: >> is more appropriate for this configuration. > > There is not an undeclared Conflict, because it was never my intention > to force the removal of diff when diffutils is installed. This is not what I proposed. I'm thinking that you should use Replaces: for automatic removal of 'diff' on dist-upgrade or Breaks: to avoid installing 'diffutils' while 'diff <=2.8.1-12' is installed at the same time. > The upgrade path for diff is like this: You dist-upgrade to squeeze > and then you will have a diff which is dummy and the new diffutils. > As the dummy diff is in section oldlibs, deborpahn will tell the user > that it may be removed. > > This way the upgrade to squeeze is completely smooth as far as > diff/diffutils is concerned. > > If you didn't want to install a new essential package from unstable, > you should have put "diff" on hold. > > To summarize: This is how it's intended to be. Mixing stable and > unstable is not supported. If you do so, you should be prepared to fix > things here and there. Yes, I agree completely. But it doesn't describe my environment. I hope I've explained above, otherwise I can respond to any further questions from you. Thanks -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
