dist-upgrade can be used for more than just moving between major versions (slink->potato->woody).
Ever notice how when you do an "apt-get upgrade" you sometimes see "the following packages have been held back..." What this means is that an upgrade of those packages could really shake things up, and, in fact, they probably can't be upgraded without installing NEW packages. For exmple, package "Foo" may be held back on a normal upgrade because the version you have depends on package "Bar", but the new version depends on both "Bar" and "Baz". Normal update will generall hold package X back. dist-upgrade won't. Remember the whole net-standard shake up halfway through potato? In orget to get from the pre-netstd-shakup potao to the post-netstd-shakeup potato, you needed to do a dist-upgrade, *part way through the release*. Same deal now. Really, depending on which packages you have installed, a dist-upgrade may or not be necessary. The long and sort dof all this is that the occational dist-upgrade will help keep you on top of the major shake-ups that occur time to time in the unstable branch. Hope this helps, Bryan On 03-May-2000 Ron Rademaker wrote: > what it means, but: Why the hell are you trying to do a > dist-upgrade when you are running > woody!?!?!?!??!?!?????????????!!!!!!!!!!! > > Ron Rademaker > > On Wed, 3 May 2000, Dan Christensen wrote: > >> Lately when I've been doing 'apt-get -s dist-upgrade' on my woody system >> I often get dozens of things like >> >> Inst kernel-package [shellutils on hurd] >> >> Can someone tell me what this means? Thanks. >> >> Dan >>