Martin Costabel wrote:
Steven Stromer wrote:
I just ran a fink self-update, and I noticed that some packages that
were installed on my machine prior to updating were uninstalled, such
as the package libofx. When I look at their statuses using 'list' in
Fink,
There is a newer version named libofx1 now. For compatibility reasons,
the name has to change; only a part of the old package, under the name
libofx-shlibs, is still around.
they are listed as not installed, and are listed in FinkCommander as
being 'archived', a status FinkCommander describes as 'mean[ing] that
you previously installed the package but removed it so that only the
debian archive remains on your system or that you ran the build
command for a package but have not yet installed it'.
Would it be correct to assume that these packages were uninstalled
because no other installed package has a dependency on them any
longer, and they have been replaced by other packages?
Yes, libofx itself did not allow dependencies on it, libofx-shlibs did,
and therefore the latter still exists.
Also, is it good practice to remove the 'debian archive' that has been
left behind? Can this even be done?
You can remove the debian archives (files with .deb extension) if you
wish, commands like "fink cleanup" even do this for you. The only
consequence you might have to face is that fink will recompile or
redownload the package if necessary, instead of just unpacking the deb
archive. This can sometimes be annoying; you don't want to remove
gettext-dev and libgettext3-dev deb files, for example, because these
packages love to be removed and reinstalled automatically during fink
package building.
Deb archives are found in two places: Those made on your machine by fink
are in the /sw/fink/dist hierarchy in subdirectories named
binary-darwin-powerpc and they are listed via symbolic links in the
directory /sw/fink/debs. Those downloaded via apt-get or via
install-from-binary by FinkCommander are in subdirectories of
/sw/var/cache/apt/archives/
Martin,
Thank you for your informative responses. I am concerned that libofx may
be prematurely removed. If you've got a second, please look for the
thread titled 'libofx package in the Bermuda triangle?' in the
gmane.os.apple.fink.general list. I found, a week before this last
update that gnucash and gnucash-docs would not function without libofx,
and that libofx-shlibs and libofx1 would not fix the problem. The
package maintainer reposted libofx to get things to work, and
acknowledged that the dependency had been accidentally broken by the
removal of libofx. Should I be assuming that gnucash and gnucash-docs
were somehow updated this past week to no longer need the original
libofx, and that this is why libofx has been removed? Backing up this
assumption is the fact that gnucash and gnucash-docs are still working
now, even though libofx has been removed.
Thus, my original question regarding the phasing out of a package
remains partly answered. Where can I learn more about what happens to a
package when it is no longer part of the distro? Again, using the
example of libofx, what, for instance, makes package management software
so confident that I don't need this package for my own purposes that it
assumes the validitiy of its decision to remove the package from my
configuration? A pointer to where I can read more would be great.
Thanks again for your generous assistance,
Steven
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