On Thu, 2021-08-19 at 19:55 -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 10:39:45PM +0200, Simon Richter wrote: > > > > I think no one likes that idea, but it's the only solution that doesn't > > immediately fail because it requires a dpkg update that hasn't shipped with > > the current stable release, breaks local packages (kernel modules, firmware, > > site-wide systemd configuration), or both. > > This could be solved if we could somehow require dpkg to be updated > before any other packages during the the next update, no? > > Breaking this constraint means that we can't make "apt-get > dist-update" work seemlessly --- but what if we were to change the > documented procedure for doing a major update? > > That's not ideal, granted, but how does that compare against the other > alternatives? > > - Ted > > P.S. I had a vague memory that there was some update in the long > distant past where we did require a manual upgrade of dpkg first. Or > is my memory playing tricks on me? I do know that a manual update of > dpkg is the first step in a crossgrade....
An update to dpkg is not _required_. It might be very strongly _desired_ which is a perfectly legitimate stance to take, but it is not technically required, otherwise we couldn't have been shipping with merged-usr as default in new installations of Buster and Bullseye for 2+ years, we could not have been installing usrmerge in older installations for 2+ years, and Ubuntu would not exist anymore since legacy split-usr is discontinued and even older installations are being forcibly converted. So continuing to live with this minor ~20 years old dpkg bug as we've been doing for years is a valid option - one that some might very, very strongly dislike and argue against which is again perfectly legitimate, but it is de-facto an option nonetheless, because it's the actual status quo for 2+ years. -- Kind regards, Luca Boccassi
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