I certainly prefer NOT doing any ugly stuff with dpkg. "apt-get dist-upgrade" will uninstall packages that havn't been updated to the new c++ yet, which certainly is worth a bug report on these packages... That is exactly the PRO of a good dependency management... Instead of hacking some ugly stuff into dpkg, which is likely to break more stuff, and adding a wrapper to _hundrets_ of applications certainly is ugly... hacking the dynamic linker certainly is better than that... ANY such hack is more likely do break than the dependency system (which will just keep a few packages in an "uninstallable" state for sid, people could always get the latest package from sarge...)
No, IMHO the best way should rely only on the Dependency system. I'm fine with adding a char or other tag to the package, too - lot's of package names (and especially the affected library names) are already quite cryptic... another char doesn't matter there... The change from libpng2 -> libpng3 with gtk2 was FINE, imho. It worked like a charm... I waited until the list of packages which would be deinstalled by that move contained and switched then... i lost just two or three apps i had installed, so what... (mostly i lost mozilla-snapshot and galeon-snapshot which i built myself ;) And if that gcc -> 3.2 move takes a month - well, i can live a months with the software versions i have installed right now. I don't need the bleeding edge for any price. The dependencies should help me know the price i had to pay... ;) But people will need to learn the difference between apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade... i guess we'll get dozens of these bug reports while doing the move... BUT: What about preparing for future instances of this problem? Could we maybe have all new libs in /usr/lib/libc6/gcc3.2/ so if this occurs again, it will easier be solved? (hmm... i don't like these paths, either... but some stuff like this should probably be done...) Well, i'm not a dynamic linking insider, these are just my ideas. There are others much more competent around. Gruss, Erich Schubert -- erich@(mucl.de|debian.org) -- GPG Key ID: 4B3A135C A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know. Die kürzeste Verbindung zwischen zwei Menschen ist ein Lächeln. Mathematik: Das Alphabet, mit dessen Hilfe Gott das Universum beschrieben hat.