On 2009-09-19 21:18 +0200, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> Note that transitional packages are seamless for users. When users has
> foo in $stable, and foo gets renamed into bar in $stable +1, then there
> is that:
>
> $stable: package foo
> $stable + 1: foo Depends bar, bar {replaces foo, provides foo, conflicts foo}
> $stable + 2: foo is dropped, replaces/provides/conflicts foo in bar can be
> dropped.
>
> After user has upgraded from $stable to $stable + 1, he doesn't have
> 'foo' anymore.
>
> There is one point in having the transitional package: it ensures that
> no package does try to take "foo" as a package name in $stable + 1 which
> would then in turn confuse apt.
>
> That is the state of the art. Could you please elaborate where and why
> this field would help ?
It would help frontends to transition the "Automatically installed"
status from bar to foo. Currently in this situation bar is marked as
automatic as it's a dependency of foo, and you need to do e.g.
"aptitude unmarkauto bar; aptitude markauto foo" so that
- removing foo does not accidentally remove bar as well;
- foo gets away as soon as it's no longer needed.
This should really be done by the package management, not by the user.
Sven
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