On Fri, 2 Sep 2005 23:20:48 -0400 "B. Stia"
On Friday 02 September 2005 06:12 pm, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
Ever since ftp.gwdg.de SuSE/9.3-i386/gnome was provided, I have been using it with apt-get to update the packages on my system. Recently, __some__ packages were upleveled to use a new cairo and placed in that depository. But __other__ packages, which I had already installed on my system, were NOT upleveled at the time.
When today I type 'apt-get dist-upgrade', it offers to upgrade a bunch of packages, but would REMOVE 64 PACKAGES from my system, many of which I'd rather keep (e.g., 'gdm' and 'gnome-panel' and 'gnome-themes' and 'totem').
I __WISH__ the 9.3 Gnome component depository on ftp.gwdg.de would provide "compatible" packages to upgrade what is in my system, instead of causing apt-get to threaten to remove so many.
[Or else NOT put packages into that depository which cause lots of previously distributed packages to become "not compatible".]
Mikus
I don't know about the gnome repository because I do not use it. I have been using apt-get for many years though. First try "upgrade" instead of "dist-upgrade". There is a difference.
I deliberately did not complain about 'apt-get upgrade'. That runs o.k. on my system. But it does tell me that 63 packages were NOT upgraded (presumably because the files those packages depend upon were not identified as "fetchable"). And when I attempt to use 'apt-get install xxx' to "fetch" a *specific* resource that one of those "NOT upgraded" packages wants, apt-get says it will happily do it if I let apt-get first REMOVE 60-ODD PACKAGES. Which I suspect would cripple my system. [If it removed a couple of packages, I would know how to find them somewhere, but I'm not about to try to manually resolve dependencies for 60-odd packages. And in my experience apt-get will *fail* to do what I want unless it is totally satisfied that dependency conflicts have been resolved.]
Usually when apt-get does that there have been wholesale package changes where many of the programs have been moved around. apt is trying to sort that out for you. As I said, I know nothing about the gnome packaging.
What I think is that some of the new packages in the ftp.gwdg.de 9.3 Gnome component depository have a direct or indirect dependency upon the newer cairo, whereas some of the packages I have already installed on my system (e.g., 'totem') have a direct or indirect dependency on the older cairo. Meaning that when I say 'apt-get upgrade', many new packages are found to be in conflict with the packages already on my system (and thus are "held back" by apt-get); while were I to say 'apt-get dist-upgrade', many of the packages already installed on my system would be found to be in conflict, and would be removed by apt-get. [So far I have NOT seen evidence that the new packages would move programs around, though once upon a time certain SuSE Gnome items were located in /usr, whereas they now are in /opt.] What I __WISH__ is that even those packages with an indirect dependency on cairo had been recompiled and added to the ftp.gwdg.de 9.3 Gnome component depository, and that ALL the packages there had their dependency lists so arranged, that 'apt-get upgrade' would NOT be deciding to "hold back" such a large number of packages. mikus