Tomas Chvatal writes ("Re: Update alternatives priority mismatch in openSUSE"):
> Thanks for the review. I will try to use it only until we fix all the
> python/ruby packages we have because atm it results in quite broken
> systems without it.Of course what you do in your distro is up to you, but I would recommend against your suggested patch to update-alternatives even in this situation. > As each package calls the script with different priority would that > cause any problems then? I can only imagine this flapping happening if > multiple packages have exactly same priority. Yes, but that is precisely the situation you say you have. Applying this change to your u-a will turn your users' systems from ones which are either broken, or working, into ones which oscillate between broken and working whenever they do a security or stability update, or reinstall packages for any other reason. So I think this change arguably makes matters worse even for you. If you cannot manage to update the priorities in a timely fashion, I have an alternative suggested temporary workaround for your distro: Change update-alternatives so that when the alternatives have equal priority, it breaks the tie by using the dpkg version comparison algorithm on the primary link target pathnames. (Or maybe even strcmp will be good enough.) This would provide the necessary stability and also mean that newer versions would be preferred (which I infer is what you want). That patch ought to be reverted later. Regards, Ian.
