Unable to install mate-core on Debian Sid

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Joe!

On 05/30/2016 07:58 PM, Joe Gullo wrote:
> Mate is unable to be installed in Debian Sid.  I am unable to install mate-core, mate-desktop-environment and mate-desktop-environment-core because marco is at
> an incompatible version in the Debian Sid repos.  Marco 1.12.1-1 is in the repo, but the other packages require 1.14.0.
> 
> It appears that marco 1.12.1 is from November 2015, and marco is actually currently at 1.14.2.

You are using Debian unstable which is a highly moving target meaning that many packages are
rapidly changing or some of the packages get out of sync. This is well known and inevitable,
simply because Debian unstable is the place were newly uploaded packages directly end up,
you get the packages once they are available.

However, since something as complex as a desktop environment consists of a *large* number of
packages, it might get affected by the "out-of-sync" problem which is exactly what happened
here. All packages of the MATE desktop were updated to their current 1.14 versions while
src:marco was kept back as it was stuck in Debian's NEW queue [1].

This is a well known behavior and simply inevitable in Debian unstable. I have explained
it in a bit more detail in [2]. But to cut a long story short: Your problem will resolve
automatically if just wait a few hours for the FTP mirrors to sync since the 1.14
version of src:marco has recently be accepted into unstable [3].

Please be aware that these situations will happen frequently in Debian unstable and
therefore please refrain from reporting any bugs (which luckily you didn't do in this
case).

Thanks,
Adrian

> [1] https://wiki.debian.org/NewQueue
> [2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=825791#31
> [3] https://packages.qa.debian.org/m/marco/news/20160530T070032Z.html

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaubitz at debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz at physik.fu-berlin.de
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