Bug#667599: dolfin-dev: fails to upgrade from squeeze - apt does not find an upgrade path

[Margarita Manterola]

Hi,

I've been investigating the hdf5 package dependencies issues for the
past  hours.  I've found that removing conflict+provides+replaces on
every -1.8 version allows the packages that depend on libhdf5 to be
upgraded, but in this case libhdf5-*-dev is held back, because of a
similar conflict in libjpeg.

I consider that removing the conflict+provides+replaces is both
harmless and the correct thing to do.  The contents of the packages
are totally different, and it would be possible for two packages to be
used with both libraries at the same time without a problem.

Contents of libhdf5-openmpi-1.8.4:
/.
/usr
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/libhdf5.so.6.0.3
/usr/lib/libhdf5_hl.so.6.0.3
/usr/lib/libhdf5hl_fortran.so.6.0.3
/usr/lib/libhdf5_fortran.so.6.0.3
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-1.8.4
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-1.8.4/HISTORY-1_8.txt.gz
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-1.8.4/README.Debian
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-1.8.4/HISTORY-1_0-1_8_0_rc3.txt.gz
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-1.8.4/copyright
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-1.8.4/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-1.8.4/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/lib/libhdf5.so.6
/usr/lib/libhdf5hl_fortran.so.6
/usr/lib/libhdf5_fortran.so.6
/usr/lib/libhdf5_hl.so.6
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-1.8.4/RELEASE.txt.gz

Contents of libhdf5-openmpi-7:
/.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-7
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-7/HISTORY-1_0-1_8_0_rc3.txt.gz
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-7/HISTORY-1_8.txt.gz
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-7/copyright
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-7/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-7/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/lib
/usr/lib/libhdf5hl_fortran.so.7.0.2
/usr/lib/libhdf5_hl.so.7.0.2
/usr/lib/libhdf5_fortran.so.7.0.2
/usr/lib/libhdf5.so.7.0.2
/usr/share/doc/libhdf5-openmpi-7/RELEASE.txt.gz
/usr/lib/libhdf5_hl.so.7
/usr/lib/libhdf5.so.7
/usr/lib/libhdf5_fortran.so.7
/usr/lib/libhdf5hl_fortran.so.7

After removing the conflict+provides+replaces, petsc-dev (one of the
depending packages affected by this problem) could be upgraded without
problems; however, libhdf5-openmpi-dev was still kept back, because of
this:

libhdf5-openmpi-dev: Depends: libjpeg-dev
libjpeg8-dev: Conflicts: libjpeg62-dev but 6b1-3 is to be installed

Detailed analysis:

libhdf5-openmpi-dev 1.8.4-patch1-2 depends on libjpeg62-dev
libhdf5-openmpi-dev 1.8.8-9 depends on libjpeg-dev

libjpeg62-dev 6b1-1 provides libjpeg-dev
libjpeg62-dev 6b1-3 doesn't provide libjpeg-dev
libjpeg8-dev 8d-1 provides libjpeg-dev and conflicts with libjpeg62-dev

The only way that I found to resolve the conflict was to manually
remove libjpeg62-dev.  After that, everything could be upgraded
properly.  I don't understand why apt doesn't decide to do this when
doing dist-upgrade.  I can't figure out why apt is not dropping the
conflicting package and preferring the upgrade, instead of just
holding the packages back.

aptitude decides better in this case, going for the upgrade of the
right packages and the removal of the obsolete ones, although it also
tries to remove totally harmless and unrelated x11-common.

At this point I'm unsure as to how to proceed.  I'm attaching here the
debdiff of the packages I modified.  For testing purposes, compiled
packages, with the corresponding Packages.gz file can be found at:

deb http://marga.com.ar/debian/packages/hdf5 ./

-- 
Regards,
Marga
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