`Breaks' dependency field

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Jul 31, 2006 at 04:30:06PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Matt Zimmerman writes ("Re: `Breaks' dependency field"):
> > On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 04:43:08PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > > It is now sensible to start using Breaks instead of Conflicts for this in
> > > edgy:
> > 
> > Is it?  I don't think apt recognizes nor honors this field yet.
> 
> Yes.  See the spec wiki page, which has the complete deployment plan.
> This includes deploying the field in packages before any change is
> made to apt.

I took your word for this at the time, though it seems that this is in fact
rather less than ideal.  A standard upgrade in Edgy now results in apt trying
to perform an upgrade which is doomed to fail due to dpkg enforcing Breaks,
resulting in a nasty error and inconsistent dependencies among installed
packages.

The user can't find their way out of this mess without dpkg --force-depends.
It seems to me that use of Breaks needs to be avoided until the implementation
is complete, including apt.

Filed http://launchpad.net/bugs/56394 about this issue.

-- 
 - mdz