Re: libneon25, or libneon26?

On Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 06:49:35PM -0700, Marc Shapiro wrote:
I have an Etch system that I keep up to date with nightly downloads
using cron-apt and doing a manual 'aptitude upgrade' every few days. A
few days ago I noticed that OOo was being held back. A little research
showed that it needed the installation of libneon25. But I already have
libneon26 installed.

As far as apt(itude) is concerned, libneon25 and libneon26 are
*different* packages. The "25" and "26" here are part of the package
name, not version number.

Package maintainers sometimes let the major version numbers be part of
the package name for libraries to let multiple versions be installed
simultaneously. It speeds up the upgrade process; imagine this
scenario:
- In january, packages A and B depend on libneon25
- In feb, a new version of libneon (26) is released. But this has ABI
changes, so software needs to be recompiled/changed to use it
- Package A is recompiled for the libneon26 abi. It now depends on
libneon26 rather than libneon25

If it was not possible to have both libneon25 and libneon26 installed
simultaneously, then you couldn't have package A and B installed at the
same time either.

Aptitude shows it as being automatically installed, so it is aware of
the package, but says that it is unused and will be removed. Why dos
aptitude want to remove libneon26 and install libneon25?

Aptitude is clever. If nothing depends on libneon26, and it's not one of
the packages that you specifically wanted installed, then it's a
candidate for removal.

Sounds like you had something installed (at some point) that needed
libneon26, but that "something" has been removed again. So aptitude
tries to tidy up for you.

Is there any way to use what I have, or do I need to let aptitude
downgrade libneon?

Unless you need libneon26 for something else outside the package
management system (e.g. stuff you manually installed in /usr/local or
/opt), I'd say to let aptitude do its thing. It's very good at keeping
things tidy.

Hope this helps
--
Karl E. Jorgensen
karl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.jorgensen.org.uk/
karl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx http://karl.jorgensen.com
==== Today's fortune:
It's not really a rule--it's more like a trend.
-- Larry Wall in <199710221721.KAA24321@xxxxxxxx>

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