[maemo-developers] Maemo 5 PR1.2 and Extras

[From: Attila Csipa]

On Wednesday 24 February 2010 15:43:47 Thomas Tanner wrote:
> In a (Debian based) distribution the proper way to handle such conflicts
> would be to specify the minimum required version in each extras apps
> (e.g. qt4.5) and to switch to a new package name if the new package is
> no longer backwards compatible (qt4.6).

> If it not possible to install both qt4.5 and qt4.6 due to space
> constraints the user should have the option to either deinstall old
> qt4.5 apps or wait until all his extras apps are upgraded 4.6.

The complications stem from the way this is handled in Maemo, at least for Qt. 
I just hope this slightly complex PR1.2 Qt transition is not a snowball 
effect of how some Maemoisms were added (hacked :) ) into Qt4.5/4.6 and even 
more that this is not a sign of how these things will be handled in the 
future. Backwards compatibility was something Qt4 was very well known for, 
and desktop environments often bump their Qt versions for backports (hell, 
even LTS versions of Ubuntu did that), without requiring 
repository/application hoop-jumping. 


> Forced upgrades of some components for installation of a new package is
> standard practice for all package management systems (keyword version
> dependencies).

It seems we have a different definition of forced upgrade :) (I would use the  
required term for what you described) 


Regards,
Attila