[SID - Unstable] 750 packages +b1 ?

[maloosheck]

I have been running Sid for some time. I usually try to update it every few days just to avoid long list of packages. The highest number of packages to update was related to the *t64 update. However, last time I run "apt update" I got the list of 750 upgradable packages, most of which were jumping by +b1 version up. It looks kind of weird so I wanted to know if this sudden increase of packages is intentional.

[froggit9000]

I saw over 1000 packages when I updated. After the update I performed the apt full-upgrade. All was well but there seems to be one package libmagick++-dev held back... there appears to be an upgrade from version 6 to 7 going on which I expect may be resolved soon.

[wizard10000]

Yes, it's intentional. There's been a Perl transition going on for the last two weeks and hundreds of packages are impacted. Was about 450 packages on my laptop yesterday.

Was announced on the debian-devel-announce mailing list on Oct 14 - that and the debian-devel list would be good mailing lists to watch.

[fabien]

However, last time I run "apt update" I got the list of 750 upgradable packages, most of which were jumping by +b1 version up.

This is a type of Non-maintainer uploads (NMU) called Binary-only non-maintainer upload.

Sometimes the initial porter upload is problematic because the environment in which the package was built was not good enough (outdated or obsolete library, bad compiler, etc.). Then you may just need to recompile it in an updated environment. However, you have to bump the version number in this case
[...]
The magic for a recompilation-only NMU is triggered by using a suffix appended to the package version number, following the form bnumber. For instance, if the latest version you are recompiling against was version 2.9-3, your binary-only NMU should carry a version of 2.9-3+b1. If the latest version was 3.4+b1 (i.e, a native package with a previous recompilation NMU), your binary-only NMU should have a version number of 3.4+b2.

Please note, binNMUs don't need to be acknowledged in your source changelog afterwards, whereas NMUs typically are.

However, it is possible to access the specific changelog before applying the updates. Use the --download-only option of your APT front-end:

-d, --download-only
Download only; package files are only retrieved, not unpacked or installed.

-d, --download-only
Download packages to the package cache as necessary, but do not install or remove anything. By default, the package cache is stored in /var/cache/apt/archives.

Code: Select all

#> apt -d full-upgrade

Use dpkg -X to extract the package:

Code: Select all

$> dpkg -X /var/cache/apt/archives/libaacs0_0.11.1-4+b1_amd64.deb /tmp/libaacs/
./
./usr/
./usr/lib/
./usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
./usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libaacs.so.0.7.2
./usr/share/
./usr/share/doc/
./usr/share/doc/libaacs0/
./usr/share/doc/libaacs0/KEYDB.cfg.gz
./usr/share/doc/libaacs0/README.md
./usr/share/doc/libaacs0/changelog.Debian.amd64.gz
./usr/share/doc/libaacs0/changelog.Debian.gz
./usr/share/doc/libaacs0/changelog.gz
./usr/share/doc/libaacs0/copyright
./usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libaacs.so.0

Read the specific changelog:

Code: Select all

$> zless /tmp/libaacs/usr/share/doc/libaacs0/changelog.Debian.amd64.gz
$> zcat /tmp/libaacs/usr/share/doc/libaacs0/changelog.Debian.amd64.gz
libaacs (0.11.1-4+b1) sid; urgency=low, binary-only=yes

  * Binary-only non-maintainer upload for amd64; no source changes.
  * Rebuild for PAC/BTI support

 -- amd64 / i386 Build Daemon (x86-csail-01) <buildd_amd64-x86-csail-01@buildd.debian.org>  Mon, 28 Oct 2024 21:44:26 +0000

I don't know what this has to do with amd64 since it is an arm64 thing.
I'm also not sure if this is related to the current Perl transition @wizard10000. Maybe linked to this:

glibc (2.40-3) unstable; urgency=medium
[...]
* debian/control.in/main: adjust g++-for-host version on arm64 to ensure
PAC/BTI support.
[...]
-- Aurelien Jarno <aurel32@debian.org> Tue, 24 Sep 2024 21:46:16 +0200

[wizard10000]

I'm also not sure if this is related to the current Perl transition @wizard10000. Maybe linked to this:

glibc (2.40-3) unstable; urgency=medium
[...]
* debian/control.in/main: adjust g++-for-host version on arm64 to ensure
PAC/BTI support.
[...]
-- Aurelien Jarno <aurel32@debian.org> Tue, 24 Sep 2024 21:46:16 +0200

Could be. Didn't see anything relevant in debian-devel so just guessing

[maloosheck]

Yes, it's intentional. There's been a Perl transition going on for the last two weeks and hundreds of packages are impacted. Was about 450 packages on my laptop yesterday.

Was announced on the debian-devel-announce mailing list on Oct 14 - that and the debian-devel list would be good mailing lists to watch.

Thank you, I have just signed up for debian-devel-announce mailing list.

[wizard10000]

Most excellent.

Another list that's helpful is debian-devel. What I did was set up a mail rule so that anything containing lists.debian.org goes to its own folder.

I'm not a developer so I mostly just browse subject lines to see if there's anything I need to look out for.

cheers -

[donald]

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