Re: [HTCondor-users] Debian packages versioning: identical for squeeze and wheezy

[Steffen Grunewald <Steffen.Grunewald@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 10:44:26AM +0100, Steffen Grunewald wrote:
> I'm not sure whether this is intended this way, but apparently
> Debian Squeeze and Wheezy packages carry the same version (while
> having different dependencies).
> 
> The way APT works does not depend on filenames (which are clearly
> distinguishable) but on version/build strings which are extracted
> from the packages themselves (control in the debian subtree).
> 
> Some people like me have to carry around certain legacy stuff,
> and therefore have squeeze and wheezy lines in their sources.list.
> 
> With the current 8.0.4 packages, one cannot properly predict which
> package will be installed - and with a Squeeze installation, on
> dist-upgrade to Wheezy, there's no safe way to replace the deb6.0
> package with the deb7 one.
> 
> Of course the solution would be to get rid of those squeeze lines
> completely (not feasible now), including UWisc's repo directly
> (which would force upgrades earlier than possibly desired - 
> currently, we're "buffering" new versions for a while before
> releasing them to our pool) - anything else?

This situation hasn't changed with the 8.1.3 packages - "dpkg -I"
shows identical strings for "Version":
 Version: 8.1.3-214200
This means that if I install the squeeze (deb_6.0) package on a 
Squeeze system, and subsequently dist-upgrade, the deb_7 package
will not automatically replace the - now obsolete, and very probably
malfunctioning - squeeze one. Which IMHO is a violation of Debian 
Policy (a bug of severity "serious" or even "grave"). Can we expect
this to be changed for the upcoming versions? I believe there are
quite some users who are still with Squeeze at this time, but have
to migrate to Wheezy before security support runs out in May - and
will face this problem sooner or later.

- S