Package: perl-base Version: 5.24.1-2 Severity: serious Technically #786705 is just a harmless warning, but when during a jessie -> stretch upgrade perl-base is upgraded before debconf is upgraded the user might see a lot scary warnings as if something was seriously broken.
Example with debconf 1.5.56 and perl-base 5.24.1-2 installed: # apt-get install libpam-modules Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following additional packages will be installed: libpam-modules-bin The following packages will be upgraded: libpam-modules libpam-modules-bin 2 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B/412 kB of archives. After this operation, 18.4 kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/^(.*?)(\\)?\${ <-- HERE ([^{}]+)}(.*)$/ at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 72. Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/\${ <-- HERE ([^}]+)}/ at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 30. Preconfiguring packages ... (Reading database ... 10801 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../libpam-modules-bin_1.1.8-3.5_amd64.deb ... Unpacking libpam-modules-bin (1.1.8-3.5) over (1.1.8-3.1+deb8u2) ... Setting up libpam-modules-bin (1.1.8-3.5) ... (Reading database ... 10801 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../libpam-modules_1.1.8-3.5_amd64.deb ... Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/^(.*?)(\\)?\${ <-- HERE ([^{}]+)}(.*)$/ at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Question.pm line 72. Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated, passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/\${ <-- HERE ([^}]+)}/ at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Config.pm line 30. Unpacking libpam-modules:amd64 (1.1.8-3.5) over (1.1.8-3.1+deb8u2) ... Setting up libpam-modules:amd64 (1.1.8-3.5) ... Installing new version of config file /etc/security/namespace.init ... Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.6.1-2) ... # perl-base should add a Breaks: debconf (<< 1.5.57~).