[Pkg-db-devel] Bug#460562: Bug#460562: change of package name to "libdb-dev" makes it uninstallable

[Florian Weimer]

* Martin Guy:

> I could if I were building for myself, but in the debian context
> packages may build-depend on specific versions of libdb4.?-dev or may
> be happy with any (specifying libdb-dev), some figures for how many
> source packages specify the different versions in sid:

The idea is to release lenny with 4.6 and (maybe) 4.2.

>    Previously, the specific version would provide the virtual package
> and both build dependencies would be satisfied. Now libdb-dev, which
> should mean "any", always resolves to 4.6, which conflicts with the
> specific version asked for by some other package.

The conflict was already there, it was just not expressed in the package
dependencies.  For example, static linking failed when APR code was
compiled against 4.4, but you had installed 4.5.

> What is the advantage of switching the virtual/real package names over?
> To force the other 60 packages to make sure they work with libdb4.6
> instead of having up to five versions if libdb installed on every
> system?

Yes, that's the idea.  We really need to cut down the number of
different versions.

Most reverse dependencies are pretty much version-agnostic anyway
because they only use the B-tree file interface, and not advanced
features like the transactional data store.