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Date:	Thu, 01 Feb 2007 14:19:46 -0800
From:	Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
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Subject:	Re: Why is setup.exe downgrading my packages?
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Mattias Brändström wrote:

> I have a quick question about setup.exe. Why is setup.exe trying to
> downgrade some packages (e.g. libpq4) when I install other packages.
> It's annoying. :-)
> 
> I'm in the situation that I need both libpq-devel-8.1.4 and
> libpq4-8.1.4 for psycopg2 (python postgresql lib) to work. Whenever I
> install a new package setup.exe takes the opportunity to also
> downgrade libpq4 to 8.0.7 which breaks psycopg2. Very annoying.
> 
> Is there some way that I can prevent this from happening, other than
> remembering to tell setup.exe to keep version 8.1.4 of libpq4?

Setup always starts by trying to put every installed package to the
'Curr' version.  This means upgrading if a new 'Curr' version is
available.  But you had previously selected a test version (aka 'Exp')
of a package, and this means it will try to downgrade it to get it back
to 'Curr'.

In order to use 'Exp' versions of some packages you will need to first
set the state to 'Hold' which leaves everything as-is and then make all
desired changes individually by hand.  This is admittedly annoying but
for good reason, as 'Exp' versions are not generally meant to be used by
lots of people because they often have special instructions or
requirements for use, or are otherwise potentially broken in some way. 
Thus the default is everything at 'Curr'.

And unfortunately, the way setup stores its information in /etc/setup/*,
it does not remember whether you actually had selected the 'Curr' or
'Exp' or 'Prev' version of a package, but rather it just records the
actual numerical version that you chose.  It has no way to persist this
knowledge (that you wanted to maintain 'Exp' for that package) between
runs.  This could certainly be improved but the package version picking
logic is already a giant mess and nobody seems to have time to work on
it.

Brian

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