Re: What can Debian do to provide complex applications to its users?
Holger Levsen writes ("Re: What can Debian do to provide complex applications to its users?"):
> On Thu, Mar 01, 2018 at 10:26:27AM +0100, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
> > Good point: not all versions are desirable; "majors" can be installed in
> > parallel, "minors" are updates to the formers.
>
> I dont get this, your minor difference may make a major difference to
> me. So if you/we were allowing several versions to be instaled in
> parallel, why restrict this again?
The upstream dependencies tend to specify particular "versions".
If one wants to modify something, it is obviously undesirable to have
to modify all the callers right up the chain with different version
numbers.
So we need to be able to install actually-different packages as the
same "version"-as-far-as-upstream-tools-are-concerned, and have them
*replace* rather than appear alongside the unmodified one.
But if *upstream* give us a new package it should usually be
coinstallable with other packages, because that coinstallability is
the Debian equivalent of the version-locking that upstreams support.
In .deb, the Package: field identifies the unit of replacement
vs. coinstall: different Package's are coinstallable, whereas two
.debs with the same Package are
switchable-between-without-disturbing-other-things (more or less).
The right answer is, IMO, to put the
version-as-far-as-upstream-is-concerned into the .deb package name.
Ian.
--
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
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