Debian bug report logs - #1647 dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. Package: texbin ; Reported by: Bill Mitchell ; 20 days old. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Bug reassigned from package `dpkg' to `texbin'. Request was from Ian Jackson to debian-bugs-request@pixar.com . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk!ian Sat Oct 28 19:33:16 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t9NYi-0006FRC; Sat, 28 Oct 95 19:33 PDT Received: from artemis.chu.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA12273 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Sat, 28 Oct 1995 19:32:47 -0700 Received: from chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk by artemis.chu.cam.ac.uk with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #33) id m0t9NYe-0007uQC; Sun, 29 Oct 95 02:33 GMT Received: by chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk id m0t9NYa-0002bdC (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Sun, 29 Oct 95 02:33 GMT Message-Id: Date: Sun, 29 Oct 95 02:33 GMT From: Ian Jackson To: debian-bugs@pixar.com Subject: Re: Bug#1647: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. In-Reply-To: <3221137@toto.iv> Some time ago, in response to Bug#1647, I wrote: > Bill Mitchell writes: > > I haven't seen this show up on debian-devel. I think Ian J. has > > closed this bug report. Perhops the buglist doesn't forward > > comments regarding closed bugreports to the list. Anyhow, > > here it is. > > I've seen it show up on debian-devel, and I've followed up to it. > > I meant to close the bug report, but didn't do so. I'm not doing so > now because it's not clear that there isn't an infelicity in the TeX > packages' conflicts/dependencies. Bill: can you see whether the original problem is still there ? I'm going to reassign this bug to the texbin package in the meantime, as I don't think there's a problem with dpkg here. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1647 ; Package dpkg . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Fri Oct 13 05:57:59 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3jgV-000B8fC; Fri, 13 Oct 95 05:57 PDT Received: from bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA00700 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Fri, 13 Oct 1995 05:57:34 -0700 Received: by bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk (Smail-3.1.29.0 #36) id m0t3jfy-000C0oC; Fri, 13 Oct 95 13:57 BST Received: by chiark id (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Fri, 13 Oct 95 13:26 BST Message-Id: Date: Fri, 13 Oct 95 13:26 BST From: Ian Jackson To: debian-bugs@pixar.com Subject: Re: Bug#1647: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. In-Reply-To: References: <9510121856.AA01458@bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com> Bill Mitchell writes: > [ renaming of packages, &c ] > > In these cases, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to get > the older, superseded or defunct packages deleted. There is such a mechanism. The new packages should declare Conflicts with the old ones. The old ones will get deselected and removed. I have thought about this problem quite carefully, and I think that the mechanisms in place are up to the job. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1647 ; Package dpkg . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From mdd.comm.mot.com!mitchell Thu Oct 12 21:05:35 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3bNG-000BfoC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 21:05 PDT Received: from motgate.mot.com by pixar.com with SMTP id AA06058 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 21:05:11 -0700 Received: from pobox.mot.com (pobox.mot.com [129.188.137.100]) by motgate.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id XAA09042; Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:05:30 -0500 Received: from mdd.comm.mot.com (mdisea.mdd.comm.mot.com [138.242.64.201]) by pobox.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with SMTP id XAA09327; Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:05:28 -0500 Received: from bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com by mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA19757; Thu, 12 Oct 95 21:05:26 PDT Received: by bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02065; Thu, 12 Oct 95 21:05:18 PDT Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 21:05:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Bill Mitchell X-Sender: mitchell@bb29c To: debian-bugs@pixar.com, iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk Subject: Re: Bug#1647: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. In-Reply-To: <9510121856.AA01458@bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In recent postings on this thread, I described a real-life problem I had, involving a current virtual package named tex and a previous, now defunct, but still-installed physical package named tex. It strikes me that the problem I described previously is just one special case of a more general problem. Over the life to date of the debian project, a number of packages have been renamed. Mass package renamings involving several packages in a closely related group have also occured. Sometimes, reorganization of related packages within a package suite renders packages defunct and eliminates them without a direct replacement. Consider this from the viewpoint of a user who routinely upgrades his system using dselect. pkgname1 would be installed, then renamed pkgname2 and re-installed with that name, then renamed pkgname3 and re-installed with that name. Something like this has happened with shar and sharutils, to name one example. In a slightly different example, a package suite consisting of pkg1, pkg2, and pkg3 might be reorganized into four packages named pkg1, pkg2a, pkg2b, and pkg2c. Something like this has happened with the x11 packages, probably with the tex packages as well, and possibly with other package suites. In these cases, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to get the older, superseded or defunct packages deleted. Many of the files in the older and newer packages would overlap, and the current dpkg does expunge files from the list of files associated with superseded packages in these cases (or so I believe). Not all of the files would overlap, however. If nothing else, there would be /usr/doc/copyright/package[123], pkg2, and pkg3 left hanging around from the superseded or defunct but not removed packages. These packages would also still show up as installed packages in "dpkg --list" and in dselect, adding irrelevent and possibly confusing information there (as the outdated and incorrect information from the defunct tex package in my status file confused me with an obsolete maintainer email address for the "tex" maintainer. Superseded or defunct packages might in some cases contain other files besides the copyright files which, in the superseding scheme, shouldn't exist and might be harmful if present (but still would exist unless the superseded or defunct packages were removed). It seems that there are three places where this problem might be dealt with: by a (hopefully) large number of users, by a smaller number of maintainers, or by a single package admin tool. It seems clear to me that the desireable place to deal with this is in the single package admin tool, but no way that this might be done without maintainer involvement occurs to me. Less desireable, but still better than expecting the users to deal with this, would to push this housekeeping off on the maintainers (who, after all, cause the problem in the first place by renaming packages), with soem help from the package admin tool. Perhaps a new control file field, something like "Supersedes: pkgname [...]". Multiple "Supersedes" fields should probably be allowed, in anticipation of the possibility of long lists of superseded packages. The present control file "Conflicts" field does provide a mechanism my which this problem can be dealt with. However that'd require user involvement to deal with the conflicts (possibly improperly) when they could be dealt with by the maintainer without user involvement using a "Supersedes" field. Also, the "Conflicts" field has been around while this situation was developing with existing packages, and the situation has developed even so. Comments? Ian J? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Bill Mitchell : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1647 ; Package dpkg . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Thu Oct 12 19:29:20 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3Zs8-000BHRC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 19:29 PDT Received: from bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA00776 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 19:28:55 -0700 Received: by bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk (Smail-3.1.29.0 #36) id m0t3Zs2-000BzfC; Fri, 13 Oct 95 03:29 BST Received: by chiark id (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Fri, 13 Oct 95 02:58 BST Message-Id: Date: Fri, 13 Oct 95 02:58 BST From: Ian Jackson To: debian-bugs@pixar.com Subject: Re: Bug#1647: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. In-Reply-To: <9510121856.AA01458@bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com> References: <9510121856.AA01458@bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com> Bill Mitchell writes: > I just dashed off a too-quick reply to this. > Let me try again, a bit more slowly and verbosely. > > Ian Jackson said: > > > There may or may not at one time have been a real package named tex. > > > Regardless, however, [...] > > Virtual packages do not have an existence separate from the packages > > that provide them. In particular, if you do `dpkg --status' on a > > virtual package you won't see any email address at all, unless there > > is a concrete package of the same name. > > The following appears to be the situation: > > 1. There was once a package named tex. It contained a copyright file. > It now appears to be defunct. However, it can be expected to > have been installed by dpkg on some number of user machines, > and to be presently installed on those machines. > > 2. There now is a package named texbin, which provides a virtual > package named tex. > > 3. There are a bunch of packages generally related to TeX. I'm not the TeX maintainer, so I don't know whether this is accurate. > Users can reasonably be expected to look at the info reported > by dpkg and dselect for the tex package and believe what they > see there. They'll get outdated and incorrect information > when they do that. This is not good. This conclusion does follow from your hypotheses above. If the texbin package were to declare `Conflicts: tex' as well as `Provides: tex' then dpkg and dselect would know that `tex' ought to be removed before `texbin' is installed. Packages which Provide things that they also Conflict with do not cause problems - they are given a special exemption from the conflict. Nils, would you like to comment ? Perhaps we should reopen this bug and assign it to the texbin package. > [ generally incorrect speculation about dpkg deleted ] Most of this isn't useful. In particular, packages can be removed other than by using dpkg --remove: if a package is deselected (for example, by an aborted removal or by dselect) and a conflicting package is given to dpkg for installation dpkg will remove the old package and replace it with the new. Packages can't invoke dpkg to change the system from their maintainer scripts, because dpkg needs to lock the package status databases while it is operating. (They can use dpkg for `status enquiries', but it's not necessarily going to give the most up to date information, so this is not usually useful.) Changing dpkg to interpret `Provides: foo' as `Provides: foo // Conflicts: foo' would make dpkg less flexible, and would make it hard to describe certain kinds of relationships to it. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1647 ; Package dpkg . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From mdd.comm.mot.com!mitchell Thu Oct 12 11:59:38 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3Sqw-000HYSC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 11:59 PDT Received: from motgate.mot.com by pixar.com with SMTP id AA24953 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 11:59:09 -0700 Received: from pobox.mot.com (pobox.mot.com [129.188.137.100]) by motgate.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id NAA23666; Thu, 12 Oct 1995 13:57:08 -0500 Received: from mdd.comm.mot.com (mdisea.mdd.comm.mot.com [138.242.64.201]) by pobox.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with SMTP id NAA28482; Thu, 12 Oct 1995 13:57:06 -0500 Received: from bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com by mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA00193; Thu, 12 Oct 95 11:57:04 PDT Received: by bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA01458; Thu, 12 Oct 95 11:56:58 PDT Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 11:56:58 PDT From: mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell) Message-Id: <9510121856.AA01458@bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com> To: debian-bugs@pixar.com, iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk Subject: Re: Bug#1647: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. I just dashed off a too-quick reply to this. Let me try again, a bit more slowly and verbosely. Ian Jackson said: > > There may or may not at one time have been a real package named tex. > > Regardless, however, [...] > Virtual packages do not have an existence separate from the packages > that provide them. In particular, if you do `dpkg --status' on a > virtual package you won't see any email address at all, unless there > is a concrete package of the same name. The following appears to be the situation: 1. There was once a package named tex. It contained a copyright file. It now appears to be defunct. However, it can be expected to have been installed by dpkg on some number of user machines, and to be presently installed on those machines. 2. There now is a package named texbin, which provides a virtual package named tex. 3. There are a bunch of packages generally related to TeX. Users can reasonably be expected to look at the info reported by dpkg and dselect for the tex package and believe what they see there. They'll get outdated and incorrect information when they do that. This is not good. It from Ian's remarks that, in order to correct this situation, the defunct tex package needs to be --remove'd from all debian user machines where it is currently installed. Perhaps the texbin package should test in its postinst whether the tex package is present (how?) and dpkg --remove it if it is (can dpkg --remove be used from a postinst script?). Alternatively, dpkg might adopt the practice of putting an entry in its status file for virtual packages, superseding any existing entry it finds there with that package name (Perhaps just the Package and Description fields, Description being: "Provided by package ". Alternatively again, dpkg might adopt the practice of deleting existing status fiele entries which collide with virtual packages when those virtual packages are provided. Alternatively again, dpkg might adopt the practice of considering it a conflict to provide a virtual package which collides with an installed physical package, and issue an error message to the effect that the colliding physical package must be removed before the package providing the colliding virtual package may be installed. Of the alternatives listed, I like the last one. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell) : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1647 ; Package dpkg . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Thu Oct 12 11:21:37 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3SG9-000ESHC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 11:21 PDT Received: from bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA22490 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 11:21:12 -0700 Received: by bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk (Smail-3.1.29.0 #36) id m0t3SFz-000BzvC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 19:21 BST Received: by chiark id (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Thu, 12 Oct 95 19:19 BST Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 19:19 BST From: Ian Jackson To: debian-bugs@pixar.com Subject: Re: Bug#1647: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. In-Reply-To: <9510121801.AA01425@bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com> References: <9510121801.AA01425@bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com> Bill Mitchell writes: > > You had `tex' installed, with the old email address. You then > > installed a new version of `texbin', with a new email address. You > > then asked dpkg about `tex', and since you still had the old `tex' > > package installed it told you the old email address. > > But there is no tex package. tex is a virtual package provided by > the texbin package. Your transcript said: > root:/mnt/i/093r6/binary/tex# dpkg --status tex > Package: tex > Status: install ok installed ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > Priority: optional > Section: tex > Maintainer: Nils Rennebarth > Version: 3.1415 > Revision: 2 > Depends: texlib, texbin > Recommends: latex > Optional: textfm > Description: TeX - The typesetting system So, not only is there a tex package, but you have it installed on your system. Try `dpkg -L tex' to see which files dpkg still has marked as being part of it. It appears to be the case that the tex package no longer exists on the FTP archive (at least, it's not in my copy of Packages-Master), but there was at some point a tex package, which you have installed and not deinstalled since then. If you were supposed to deinstall it then the TeX maintainer should have arranged for it to be necessary for you to do so. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1647 ; Package dpkg . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From mdd.comm.mot.com!mitchell Thu Oct 12 11:02:59 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3Ry6-000GAiC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 11:02 PDT Received: from motgate.mot.com by pixar.com with SMTP id AA21376 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 11:02:35 -0700 Received: from pobox.mot.com (pobox.mot.com [129.188.137.100]) by motgate.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id NAA10276; Thu, 12 Oct 1995 13:01:45 -0500 Received: from mdd.comm.mot.com (mdisea.mdd.comm.mot.com [138.242.64.201]) by pobox.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with SMTP id NAA12069; Thu, 12 Oct 1995 13:01:42 -0500 Received: from bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com by mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA27825; Thu, 12 Oct 95 11:01:35 PDT Received: by bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA01425; Thu, 12 Oct 95 11:01:30 PDT Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 11:01:30 PDT From: mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell) Message-Id: <9510121801.AA01425@bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com> To: debian-devel@pixar.com, debian-bugs@pixar.com, iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk Subject: Re: Bug#1647: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. > You had `tex' installed, with the old email address. You then > installed a new version of `texbin', with a new email address. You > then asked dpkg about `tex', and since you still had the old `tex' > package installed it told you the old email address. But there is no tex package. tex is a virtual package provided by the texbin package. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell) : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1647 ; Package dpkg . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Thu Oct 12 06:14:19 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3NSl-000HUTC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 06:14 PDT Received: from bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA10292 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-developer-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 06:13:54 -0700 Received: by bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk (Smail-3.1.29.0 #36) id m0t3NSV-000C0gC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 14:14 BST Received: by chiark id (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Thu, 12 Oct 95 14:10 BST Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 14:10 BST From: Ian Jackson To: Debian developers list , debian-bugs@pixar.com Subject: Re: Bug#1647: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. Bill Mitchell writes ("Bug#1647: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages."): > Package: dpkg > Version: 1.0.0 > Revision: 0 > > There may or may not at one time have been a real package named tex. > Regardless, however, the following sequence results in incorrect > information being presented (in this case, an old email address. > luckily, there was a .forward file in place there.). The transcript you enclose doesn't show anything inconsistent. You had `tex' installed, with the old email address. You then installed a new version of `texbin', with a new email address. You then asked dpkg about `tex', and since you still had the old `tex' package installed it told you the old email address. I'm marking this bug as done. > Suggest that status file info be updated from the latest info > supplied by the package providing a virtual package. Perhaps > the Description field for virtual package entries might be set > to something like "Provided by the package", and the > Version and Description fields omitted or set to "None". Virtual packages do not have an existence separate from the packages that provide them. In particular, if you do `dpkg --status' on a virtual package you won't see any email address at all, unless there is a concrete package of the same name. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1647 ; Package dpkg . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From mdd.comm.mot.com!mitchell Wed Oct 11 20:30:39 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3ELv-000DabC; Wed, 11 Oct 95 20:30 PDT Received: from motgate.mot.com by pixar.com with SMTP id AA24203 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Wed, 11 Oct 1995 20:30:11 -0700 Received: from pobox.mot.com (pobox.mot.com [129.188.137.100]) by motgate.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id WAA17537 for ; Wed, 11 Oct 1995 22:30:31 -0500 Received: from mdd.comm.mot.com (mdisea.mdd.comm.mot.com [138.242.64.201]) by pobox.mot.com (8.6.11/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with SMTP id WAA10019 for ; Wed, 11 Oct 1995 22:30:30 -0500 Received: from bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com by mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA00151; Wed, 11 Oct 95 20:30:23 PDT Received: by bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA00865; Wed, 11 Oct 95 20:30:17 PDT Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 20:30:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Bill Mitchell X-Sender: mitchell@bb29c To: debian-bugs@pixar.com Subject: dpkg can present incorrect info for virtual packages. Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Package: dpkg Version: 1.0.0 Revision: 0 There may or may not at one time have been a real package named tex. Regardless, however, the following sequence results in incorrect information being presented (in this case, an old email address. luckily, there was a .forward file in place there.). Suggest that status file info be updated from the latest info supplied by the package providing a virtual package. Perhaps the Description field for virtual package entries might be set to something like "Provided by the package", and the Version and Description fields omitted or set to "None". Script started on Wed Oct 11 18:06:42 1995 root:/mnt/i/093r6/binary/tex# dpkg --status tex Package: tex Status: install ok installed Priority: optional Section: tex Maintainer: Nils Rennebarth Version: 3.1415 Revision: 2 Depends: texlib, texbin Recommends: latex Optional: textfm Description: TeX - The typesetting system root:/mnt/i/093r6/binary/tex# dpkg --install texbin.deb (Reading database ... 12973 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace texbin (using texbin.deb) ... Unpacking replacement texbin ... Setting up texbin ... root:/mnt/i/093r6/binary/tex# dpkg-deb --field texbin.deb maintainer Nils Rennebarth root:/mnt/i/093r6/binary/tex# dpkg --status tex | grep -i maintainer Maintainer: Nils Rennebarth root:/mnt/i/093r6/binary/tex# exit Script done on Wed Oct 11 18:08:55 1995 mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Bill Mitchell : New bug report received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Report forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1647 ; Package dpkg . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ian Jackson / iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk , with the debian-bugs tracking mechanism This page last modified 07:43:01 GMT Wed 01 Nov