On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Joseph Carter wrote: > On Fri, Oct 30, 1998 at 01:24:03PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote: > > >We need some kind of line in control that apt/dselect understand to tell > > >them that the packages just split. dpkg probably doesn't need to know/care > > >about it. > > > > This is one intended purpose of Replaces. Surely the new packages > > declare Replaces on the old ones ? It's definitely on the wishlist > > for dselect to automatically select package A if a new version of it > > or new package of it appears which Replaces an existing and installed > > B.
Replaces has so many other meanings and common uses that it is not good enough to base a automatic package install on. I actually can't really think of how you'd want to specify this.. If it were implemented into apt-get then it would only be acceptable to occure on an upgrade from a pre-split -> split version and then it would be necessary to determine a new set of packages that have 'equivilant' functionality to the pre-split package. Obviosly Replaces has too many other meanings to make it reliable enough for this purpose, perhaps what is needed is a reverse sense, ie: Package: netstd <blah> Package: telnet Contained-In: netstd (<= 1.2) Conflicts: netstd (<= 1.2) <blah> Then maybe through some magic you could detect that telnet is suddenly required.. [I'd have to think about how that magic would work first :>] I guess the statement is that a package that has 'Contained-In' is implicitly installed if it's containing package is installed. Should the contained package be upgraded then it would be installed... Probably a simpler way.. Jason
