[Synaptic-devel] [bug #12529] Difficulty downgrading packages with dependencies

[anonymous]

URL:
  <http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=12529>

                 Summary: Difficulty downgrading packages with dependencies
                 Project: Synaptic
            Submitted by: None
            Submitted on: Fri 04/01/05 at 13:45
                Category: None
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open

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Details:

There are some difficulties that I have found with downgrading packages that
have dependencies on the version that I am changing.  It would be nice if
downgrades were as easy as upgrades (though I completely understand the
difficulty in this).  There are two particular situations that I have been
frustrated with:

1) If the package to be downgraded is depended on at that version by other
packages.  This will usually notify you that those packages will be removed
because of breaking dependencies.  However it is commonly the case (I'm
thinking *-dev packages) where the dependent package could be downgraded and,
as a result, no package removals would be necessary.

2) If a package being downgraded depends on a package of the current version.
 This is even more frustrating.  Synaptic will actually just ignore the
request and not provide an explanation.  If the depended package were
downgraded along with this package all conflicts would be resolved.

The current method I have been using to get around this is to let synaptic
remove the prackages, and before I commit I'll force the versions to what
they need to be.  This is difficult and annoying.  I see two ways of fixing
this, an easy to implement but less automated way, and a difficult to
implement but highly optimized way.  The easy way is to actually support
force version for packages under a multiple select and try and force all of
them not just the last clicked.  The other way would be to check to see when
a downgrade is requested that causes conflicts if there is a set of version
changes that will fix the problem.  In either case I think allowing force
version on a selection of packages is a must.  This (ideally) would let you
even deal with different packages that have different versions to choose from
all collected together.

Hope this is constructive, I enjoy this software and hope you guys keep up
the good work.






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