[Pkg-zsh-devel] Bug#707760: zsh: Alternatives broken for long time during upgrade from zsh4 to zsh5

[Aaron Schrab]

Package: zsh
Version: 5.0.2-3
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

Today I upgraded my zsh package from 4.3.17-1 to 5.0.2-3, along with a 
somewhat large number of packages.  Because there were quite a few 
packages being upgraded at once, there was a significant amount of time 
between when the new version of zsh was unpacked to replace the old 
version and the when the postinst script was run.  During this time, my 
system was left in a somewhat broken state due to many things trying to 
run /bin/zsh which was still pointing at the (already removed) /bin/zsh4 
through the alternatives system.

I don't know if there's anything which can be done to alleviate this 
issue, but it would certainly be nice if some improvement could be made.  
As jessie and sid diverge even more from wheezy the amount of packages 
upgraded at a single time is likely to increase for people switching, 
further increasing the amount of time where systems are left in a bad 
state.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
   APT prefers unstable
   APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages zsh depends on:
ii  dpkg        1.16.10
ii  libc6       2.17-1
ii  libcap2     1:2.22-1.2
ii  libtinfo5   5.9-10
ii  zsh-common  5.0.2-3

Versions of packages zsh recommends:
ii  libncursesw5  5.9-10
ii  libpcre3      1:8.31-2

Versions of packages zsh suggests:
pn  zsh-doc  <none>

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/zsh/zshrc changed [not included]

-- no debconf information