`Breaks' dependency field

Ian Jackson iwj at ubuntu.com
Wed Jul 26 16:43:08 BST 2006


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The dpkg in edgy now supports a new kind of dependency relationship,
`Breaks'.  This is like `Conflicts' but doesn't cause the
deinstallation of the broken packages, merely their deconfiguration
(to note that they're broken).

In general, Breaks is intended to replace nearly all instances of
  Conflicts: some-package (<< 0.1.2.3)
or similar.  It is now sensible to start using Breaks instead of
Conflicts for this in edgy:
  Breaks: some-package (<< 0.1.2.3)

The dist-upgrader tool will arrange for upgrades from dapper to edgy
to upgrade dpkg first; this means that this field will be honoured for
packages released as part of edgy.

It is probably _not_ worth changing Conflicts to Breaks when importing
packages from Debian or elsewhere; there are plans afoot to deploy
Breaks in Debian too and our upstream control files will be changed at
that point.

For full details of the deployment plan, see the specification
 http://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackageDependencyFieldBreaks

If you maintain Essential packages and are considering the use of
Breaks for them, please read the detailed documentation which will
hopefully be available, and/or consult me.

Ian.
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