Colin Watson wrote:
> Some are packages removed/renamed since stable: > > * freetype2-dev -> libttf-dev > * librpm1 -> librpm0 > * libwmf0-dev -> libwmf-dev > * netscape4 -> netscape-*-477 > * pnmtopng -> netpbm > * tetex-lib -> libkpathsea3 > * tetex-nonfree > * xcontrib -> xbase-clients > * xlib6g-dev -> xlibs-dev > * xpm4g -> xlibs > * xpm4g-dev -> xlibs-dev there should be a way to observe and resolve this changes somewhat more semi-automatically when doing a dist-upgrade. Same to the problem of multple cycles of upgrade/install/dpkg --configure -a e.a. IMHO. I've been dealing with this since upgrading from hamm to potato to woody/testing and it hasn't changed. Having some experience doing these dist-upgrades i can usually work around the problems, but Joe Average won't be able to do the dist upgrade without getting stuck, or loosing some packages due to reorganisation of contents. It would help a lot for public use (and of course for publicity) if dist-upgrades would happen more pleasant. As apt is explicitely equipped with "dist-upgrade" one could expect this to work this way (as man page says: "smart" conflict resolution, intelligently handles changing dependencies). Some questions and suggestions: -Is there any work in progress to do some recursivas during upgrade? -Can the inconvenience with renamed packages be reduced by using pseudo packages with the old name, with depencies on the new one? When an old programm/packages to remove comes with a bunch of others in a new package, then at least ther should be an default sugesstion set where you do not loose functionality after upgrade. -When packages do no longer belong to distro, there should be a more informative message for packaged getting removed during dist-upgrade. Of course this could be written to an README.upgrage or such. Gerhard
