On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 11:55:43AM +0200, Gena Batyan wrote: > Hello! > > I'm using unstable and I have encountered a strange situation a few times.
Hi Gena,
in fact this is not strange (for unstable). It is a situation that
occurs from time to time in the developement of Debian (or other linux
distributions). The stable version of Debian is produced after much
testing and bugfixes. All of these changes first enter the development
cycle in unstable. Some changes are minor and cause little disturbance.
And some like you have observed cause tsunamis! This kind of thing is
caused when groups of packages are being transitioned. If package 1-100
depend on Q and Q changes, all 100 packages will need to be changed. So
at some point some of the packages are still using old-Q and some are
using new-Q. If you install a package that needs new-Q, then in most
cases all the packages that use old-Q and old-Q itself must be removed.
If you wait until all 100 packages use new-Q, then you will simply
upgrade the 100 packages. If you do it now, you get a mini-fiasco.
>
> When trying to install a package using apt-get, it says among other
> things 'following packages will be REMOVED: ...' and this list is HUGE!
>
> I'll give an example. I'm trying to install gaim, which depends on the
> package libaspell15c2
>
> What in the name of god is going on here??? How can a package request
> deinstallation of almost a complete system, most of the packages
> scheduled for removal have NOTHING to do with the library.
>
> below I include what apt-get shows me when trying to install this library.
>
> Any suggestions are appreciated...
<snip>
1. Don't Panic!
The choice is:
a) do not 'apt-get update' for a while
b) 'apt-get update' until it does not want to remove lots of stuff.
option B can happen in days, weeks or longer (ask here for how long
folks think it will take)
cheers,
Kev
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