[maemo-developers] Icons are just a few bytes, right ?

[From: Marius Vollmer]

ext Attila Csipa <maemo at csipa.in.rs> writes:

>> What about removing old versions completely?  Old versions are useful,
>> but only quite rarely.  If you want, you can keep a separate
>> "extras-history" repo with all versions ever that people can use if they
>> really need to get obsolete versions.
>
> Certainly a good option, but perhaps not as clear-cut as in the case of icons 
> (=not 100% useless as old icons). There are a few potential problems with old 
> ver removal, though. Some might depend on newer versions of libs than others, 
> so not every dupe is superfluous and this check needs to be very careful in 
> order not to break other apps.

This is not how apt (and the Application manager) works.  From all the
available versions of a package, apt selects one upfront as the
candidate and then sticks with that.  The only decision it makes is
between installing that candidate version, keeping the version you have
already installed, or removing the package altogether.  It will not
reconsider which version should be the candidate based on dependencies
between packages.

Old versions are only useful with apt when you explicitly do things like

    apt-get install libfoo=1.23-5

This _is_ useful, but only during debugging.