Re: [OT] Scripts, packages, etc.

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 01:54:29PM -0400, Paul Jarc wrote:
> "D. J. Bernstein" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Paul Jarc writes:
> >> To be fair, /etc/alternatives is only one part of Debian's package
> >> management system.  Other parts do detect when a dependency needs to
> >> be upgraded, AFAIK.
> >
> > Those other parts don't allow multiple versions to be installed at the
> > same time. They don't allow undoing an upgrade without reinstalling the
> > previous version.
> 
> Right.  I was only remarking on that one problem.

/etc/alternatives is used inconsistently and does not remedy the flaws
in the dpkg system.  It seems to deal primarily with selecting among
various implementing-packages of a pseudo-package (e.g. 'less' for the
pseudo-command 'pager'.

I should note that even though I have gcc-2.95, gcc-3.0, gcc-3.1,
gcc-3.2, and gcc-3.3 (DJB's mentioned automatic package removal is
sounding nice right now), none of those packages make use of the
/etc/alternatives system to determine which contending package gets the
honor of the /usr/bin/gcc symlink (which would be gcc-2.95 if I had not
run 'ln -sf gcc-3.2 gcc').

It should be noted that while the gcc maintainers provide a package for
all releases, the Python maintainers only maintain packages for some
version of each of the latest major-versions.  They also do not use
/etc/alternatives, though the PyGTK maintainer does.

Debian could have made things a lot more consistent a long time ago by
creating separate slots for package-name and package-version and
consistently following a policy for having multiple versions installed.

Nicholas