Re: [aclug-L] [debian] Upgrading outside package system

[Steven Saner <ssaner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This will probably bring down the wrath of the Debian contingency, but
that is exactly why I gave up on Debian and went back to Slackware. It
is more work to maintain, but I feel that it gives me more
control. Then again, I never really understood all of the features
available with the package system.


On Sat, Jul 31, 1999 at 06:23:22PM +0000, Carl D Cravens wrote:
> Okay, I've got a dilemma I'm hoping to get some advice on. 
> 
> I'm running Debian 2.0 (hamm).  (I plan to upgrade to 2.1 (slink) soon,
> but it did things it wasn't supposed to do on my test machine (uninstalled
> telnet and telnetd without warning) so I'm a little leery of it.)
> 
> My version of Perl is 5.004_4, which is what came with 2.0.  I'd like to
> upgrade to 5.005_03, which is the latest stable release. (Say there's a
> possible bug that I think was fixed in the 5.005_* releases.)  Slink's
> version is 5.004_4-7, which isn't new enough.  Potato (unstable
> distribution) has the latest 5.004_* version and an *unstable* 5.005_*
> version, but not the stable 5.005_03.
> 
> On a system that doesn't use packages, I'd just download whatever version
> I want and upgrade without a thought.  On Debian, this seems like it's
> going to cause me problems.  I can't upgrade to either of the versions
> included in potato without upgrading libc6, and I'm leery of upgrading to
> libraries out of an unstable package because I don't know what else it
> might affect... I'm rather conservative and prefer to stay entirely in
> stable versions when I can.  (I just know that certain versions of Perl
> are considered stable by the Perl developers, so I feel okay upgrading
> that specific application.)
> 
> What I really want to do is just download the latest stable source and
> compile it myself.  But that means when I come along to automatically
> upgrade to slink, it's going to "upgrade" my Perl down to an earlier
> version.  I suppose I could just reinstall the newer Perl on top of it
> again, but I really dislike that option.  (I'll do it if it's the only
> thing I can come up with.) 
> 
> The problem is that many packages are dependent on Perl.  If I try to
> install or upgrade a package that depends on a newer version than what
> dpkg *thinks* I have installed, it'll cause problems. 
> 
> Does anybody have advice on how to get around this problem?
> 
> --
> Carl (raven@xxxxxxxxxxx)
> 

-- 
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Steven Saner                            SouthWind Internet Access, Inc.
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