[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#463039: Bug#463039: why does octave3.0 provide: octave2.9?

[Rafael Laboissiere]

* Steve Langasek <vorlon at debian.org> [2008-01-28 17:29]:

> The octave3.0 package in unstable has the following provides line:
> 
>   Provides: octave, octave2.9
> 
> I don't see any possible way that this can be correct.  Either octave3.0 is
> 100% compatible with octave2.9, and the source/binary package name should
> *not* have been changed for the new upstream version; or it is not 100%
> compatible, and should not have any such Provides since it may cause
> octave2.9 reverse-dependencies to install octave3.0 instead of the real
> octave2.9 and then fail to work.
> 
> In practice, most of the reverse-depends of octave2.9 have versioned
> dependencies on octave2.9, so most of these will refuse to accept octave3.0
> as a replacement.  And octave3.0 also *conflicts* with octave2.9, so they're
> not exactly co-installable either.  Something looks very wrong here.

I am revisiting this issue now and need some advice from you.  The goal of
having octave3.0 conflicting/replacing/providing octave2.9 is to ensure that
users having octave2.9 installed will be upgraded to octave3.0.  This is
correct from the upstream point of view, because the 2.9.* series of Octave
were considered as pre-releases of Octave 3.0.0 (I know, I know, we should
have used octave3.0 as the source package name to start with...)

Now, would just conflicts/replaces achieve that goal?

I still agree with you that the Provides line is wrong, for the reasons you
mention above.  I hope everything will settle down when octave2.9 will be
dropped from Debian and all the reverse-dependencies will be adjusted
accordingly (which is almost the case right now).

-- 
Rafael