Your message dated Tue, 19 May 2026 10:20:19 +0000
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Re: Bug#101870: Update multiple version handling policies
has caused the Debian Bug report #101870,
regarding developers-reference: Document best practise for update-alternatives
to be marked as done.
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101870: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=101870
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--- Begin Message ---
Package: developers-reference
Version: 3.8.8
Hi,
It seems that the usage of update-alternatives in postinst/prerm
is underdocumented.
Policy does mention update-alternatives but just points to the
update-alternatives manpage. That itself just says that it's
"usually called from the postinst or prerm scripts".
I think it would be good that there was better documentation for it on
how to use it in the maintainer scripts. During which part of the
script it should do what, and things like that.
I'm not sure what the best place to document this is, but the
developers-reference seems to be a good place to me.
Kurt
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Hi,
On Sat, May 16, 2026 at 12:07:43AM +0200, Serafeim (Serafi) Zanikolas wrote:
> this bug was originally filed against debian-policy, Chris Waters pointed out
> that policy already discusses update-alternatives, and later on Josip Rodin
> reassigned the bug to developers-reference.
thanks for this summary and for going through all those old bugs, much
appreciated!
> now, it's true that devref does not discuss update-alternatives, but it's also
> not clear to me that it should, given that it's already covered in policy.
> what
> more could be usefully said in devref that's not already in policy?
exactly.
> perhaps
> there is some value in merely mentioning the existence of update-alternatives
> and linking to the relevant section in policy? or should we just mark this as
> wontfix?
I think it's fine to close this bug as it has not seen much discussion after
being filled 25 years ago.
--
cheers,
Holger
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⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org
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