Bug#940034: libelogind0: replacing a core system library and conflicting against the default init considered harmful

[Thorsten Glaser]

On Mon, 23 Sep 2019, Sam Hartman wrote:

>     Mark> #935910 is now fixed in apt 1.8.4 in unstable and with that
>     Mark> installed I can no longer reproduce #934491. The APT
>     Mark> maintainers have said that adding a Breaks for the fixed
>     Mark> version of apt is not useful.
> 
> Normally in a situation like this we would wait until the next stable
> release for depending on the change in apt.

The change can be backported to buster-updates, though. AFAIR we even
require (in the install/upgrade/release notes) that people upgrade the
old distro version to the fullest before attempting an upgrade to the
new one.

> So, I think I understand Julian's issues better after trying to write my
> bits from the DPL mail.
> You haven't really tried to address them at all.

AIUI the problem is that the elogind people tried to do X after trying
to get advice, which didn’t fly, then someone told the elogind people
to do Y, and they did it, and now Julien says “don’t do Y”. I understand
this is all tricky, but the elogind people are caught between several
places of mutually mismatching expectations.

> Foo-package depends on the latest libsystemd0.  I'm running unstable or
> testing.  The latest libsystemd0 isn't building on my arch yet.  But
> elogind is simpler and has build fine on my arch.  I install foo-package
> and suddenly end up with libelogind0 instead of libsystemd0

If you add XB-Important: yes to the libsystemd0 binary package stanza
in debian/control in src:systemd, APT will not do that. It will then
furthermore require “Yes, do as I say!” instead of a simple y or Enter
when switching away from libsystemd0.

(That being said, I’d expect the elogind package to not be the first
to have a bump of the versioned Provides.) This is probably a good
idea independent of what else will be done?

bye,
//mirabilos
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