Bug#531556: upgrade problem with the proposed libarchive-tar-perl Etch update

Niko Tyni ntyni at debian.org
Tue Jun 2 12:36:31 UTC 2009


On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 01:21:13PM +0200, Julien Cristau wrote:
> severity 531556 serious
> reassign 531556 perl 5.10.0-19
> retitle 531556 perl needs updated Replaces on libarchive-tar-perl
> kthxbye
> 
> On Tue, Jun  2, 2009 at 12:20:44 +0200, Toni Mueller wrote:
> 
> > when I upgraded one of my Etch machines to Lenny, the new Perl 5.10 could not
> > be installed because it conflicted with libarchive-tar-perl (version
> > 1.38-3~etch1) which I had installed. As a consequence, all sorts of package
> > managing scripts (debsums etc.pp.) broke, and nothing moved. I was able to
> > manuall delete the offending package using dpkg, and get things going again,
> > but I don't know if that's within reach of the end user because, at
> > that point, the system was mostly non-functional because about half of
> > all my packages were not correctly installed.
> > 
> The version of libarchive-tar-perl you had installed is not in etch,
> yet.  An upgrade from plain etch would have worked.
> 
> Reassigning to perl to hopefully get an updated version in lenny when
> the new libarchive-tar-perl gets into etch.

Thanks for noticing this.

Oldstable release managers: I see libarchive-tar-perl/1.38-3~etch1 is
already accepted for etch. Is it still possible to put it on hold until
this is sorted out?

The lenny perl-modules package indeed only conflicts on
libarchive-tar-perl (<= 1.38-2). Quoting Brendan O'Dea in #470154
(cc'd to notify the pkg-perl folks):

> While I can, and have added replaces for versions of libarchive-tar-perl
> up to and including 1.38-2, you will have to add diversions for ptar and
> ptardiff (or not include them) in later versions to avoid breaking perl
> upgrades.

This did not happen with 1.38-3~etch1.

I see three options for a fix: 
- update the lenny perl-modules Conflicts 
- add diversions for /usr/bin/ptar and /usr/bin/ptardiff
  (and their manual pages) in the libarchive-tar-perl etch update
- re-upload the Etch update with a lower version number (is this even
  possible?), for example 1.38~etch-1 or somesuch

FWIW, I'd prefer having this fixed inside the libarchive-tar-perl etch
update, but I can certainly prepare a lenny update for the perl package
if that turns out to be necessary.

I'm not sure if we claim to support upgrades from an Etch point release
to the base (r0) Lenny release. If we do, this can't really be fixed
in perl-modules at all.

I think the Archive::Tar code in libarchive-tar-perl/1.38-3~etch1 is
supposed to be equivalent to that in perl-modules/5.10.0-19, so it would
not be a problem if the separate libarchive-tar-perl package stays on
the system when it's later upgraded to Lenny (as would happen with
the diversions option.)
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni at debian.org






More information about the Perl-maintainers mailing list