Advice needed: update-manager in wheezy considered dangerous

[Julian Andres Klode]

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 11:14:21AM +0200, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote:
> Hi Julian,
> 
> On 12/03/13 00:42, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> >Dear release team, I report this problem as we have switched our package management
> >stack in wheezy from update-manager and other components to PackageKit. Those
> >old components are still in wheezy however, and especially update-manager can
> >be considered to be horribly dangerous: It might break systems or contain extreme
> >security issues as it has not seen someone really care about it since 2 years.
> >
> >We cannot simply remove update-manager however, as there are reverse
> >dependencies. The most important ones appear to be:
> >
> >   * upgrade-system
> >   * update-notifier
> >
> >We could simply drop upgrade-system from testing. For update-notifier, we cannot
> >do this, as update-notifier-kde depends on update-notifier-common, and there are
> >no other notifiers for KDE AFAIK. I could however upload an empty update-notifier
> >package (for GNOME) that switches the user to the PackageKit notifier, thus
> >removing that reverse dependency.
> >
> >Summary of the proposed solution:
> >	1. Remove upgrade-system from testing
> >	2. Replace update-notifier binary package with a package transitioning
> >            users to gnome-packagekit
> >         3. Remove update-manager from testing or transition users to PackageKit
> 
> I think it's time to do something like this in unstable.

Yes. We need:
    (a) transitional packages for 
        - update-notifier
        - update-notifier-kde
        - update-manager

    (b) Breaks and Provides in gnome-packagekit / apper
	gnome-packagekit on update-notifier, update-manager
	apper on update-notifier-kde


I already uploaded a new version of update-notifier, called
0.99.3debian11+perrm1 that makes update-notifier a transitional
package; and requested update-managers removal from unstable.

I kept the update-notifier-common package the way it is now,
so update-notifier-kde keeps working until it is replaced by
a transitional package to apper. After that happened, 
update-notifier-common will be dropped.

-- 
Julian Andres Klode  - Debian Developer, Ubuntu Member

See http://wiki.debian.org/JulianAndresKlode and http://jak-linux.org/.