Jules Bean wrote: > On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, Peter S Galbraith wrote: > > > > The question is as follows: Can the Debian package `gri' mention > > a non-official package `gri-2.2.0' in its control file? > > Technically no. Perhaps if it were in contrib.
How would that help disminish the size if contrib also gets in CD and mirrors? > Could you (re-)explain why this is a good idea? Sure. Gri is a programming language in the same sense as gnuplot. While gri is currently mature, its commands have changed in the past (and bugs have occurred) such that an old command file ceases to work with a new version of Gri. To protect ourselves from this, we may keep older versions on-line, e.g. I have the following older versions installed since 1995: $ ls -l /opt/gri total 8 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 Jun 9 1995 2.017 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 Jan 9 1996 2.052 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 Apr 4 1997 2.1.10 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 May 12 1997 2.1.11 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 Oct 29 1997 2.1.15 drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 1024 Jul 2 1998 2.1.17 (The Debian ones are elsewhere) I thought I should provide the same protection to Debian users as I do for myself. But if the `replaces: gri-VERSION' line will confuse some Debian packaging scripts, then I will remove it and warn users in README.debian that there is no dpkg dependence protection if they install gri-VERSION (which will over-write files owned by the gri package). Peter
