On Wednesday 01 September 2010 22:59:01 Timothy Pearson wrote:

> >> Which is because they do not exist in the primary archive.  The simple
> >> fact is Ubuntu quite suddenly dropped KDE3 in favor of KDE4, but left
> >> several badly outdated packages in the main repository.  I have no
> >> control
> >> over that repository or their decision, and it has been causing
> >> headaches
> >> for new Trinity users since the days of Ubuntu Intrepid.
> >
> > Just some questions out of interest.
> >
> > Why isn't it possible to let the Trinity repository contain updated
> > versions of those offending packages? When the Trinity versions have a
> > higher version number, I would expect they would automatically be used
> > over the standard Ubuntu ones.
>
> This is due to the fact that they have a different name, e.g. kdelibs-kde3
> instead of kdelibs. 

This is due to use of deb package format. In rpm world the package
name does not matter for dependency resolution.

We in particular have the nave kdelibs3, and I think it did not change
when KDE4 was introduced (they have name kdelibs4).

> I could make kdelibs-kde3 conflict with kdelibs, but 
> I seem to remember that a peculiar side effect crept in when I did that in
> the past.  I can re-enable the conflict statement and see if any problems
> occur...thoughts anyone?

Why you cannot use name kdelibs for your package?

> > And does anyone know if it would be possible to take over maintenance
> > upstream, either at Debian or with Ubuntu? What is their stance about
> > providing the KDE 3 libs based on Trinity sources?
>
> I don't know.  Now that there is an upstream again in the form of Trinity
> they may be more receptive to the idea.  The process should start with
> Debian, as Ubuntu mirrors Debian's package offerings for the most part.
> The only issue is that Debian wants an on-call package maintainer, and I
> am too swamped with the Trinity project itself to properly fill that role.