mysql-server has been kept back with dist-upgrading

To reproduce in a karmic system:

1. Install mysql-server-5.0.
2. Install the latest mysql-server package from mysql-dfsg-5.0:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-dfsg-5.0/5.1.30really5.0.83-0ubuntu1

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-dfsg-5.0/5.1.30really5.0.83-0ubuntu1/+build/1113804/+files/mysql-server_5.1.30really5.0.83-0ubuntu1_all.deb

3. Try to apt-get dist-upgrade. mysql-server will be kept back.
4. Try to apt-get install mysql-server - it will successfully upgrade by removing mysql-*-5.0 and install mysql-*-5.1.

Michael could you have a look at while dist-upgrade fails?

I'm wondering if the proper solution to this is to remove mysql-dfsg-5.0 from the archive to clue apt into the fact that its binaries should get a lower score than the binaries from mysql-dfsg-5.1. It's no longer in unstable ...

There are *lots* of reverse dependencies, though.

Michael, is there anything else we can do about this that will convince apt to do the right thing?

mysql-dsfg-5.0 is currently in universe and the plan is to get rid of it during the next release cycle. The transition to 5.1 is ongoing in Debian and we would benefit from at the next release cycle.

There are also some unsupported features in 5.1 (like MySQL Cluster) that are available in 5.0. In that use case the upgrade will fail with an error message suggesting to remove mysql-server and keep mysql-server-5.0 around.

Is an action in the next release cycle good enough? We need to do something about this bug for *this* release cycle, surely.

Pushing back to 9.10, since nothing here is landing in time for beta at this point. Michael, can this still be worked around in update-manager?

I added a release upgrader hint for the handling of mysql-server now, it will be part of the next upload. Changing it so that plain apt will DTRT is more tricky, because the simple algorithm in apt generally prefers to keep installed things when two options seems to be about equal (that is the case here).

update-manager (1:0.126.1) karmic; urgency=low

  * DistUpgrade/DistUpgradeView.py:
    - log exceptions from pm.DoInstall() into main.log.
      this helps identifiying Dpkg::Pre-Invoke problems
  * DistUpgrade/DistUpgradeCache.py:
    - fix sandbox upgrade mode
  * DistUpgrade/DistUpgrade.cfg:
    - hint for mysql-server upgrade (LP: #413789)
  * UpdateManager/backend/__init__.py:
    - change order of backends to: synaptic, aptdaemon

 -- Michael Vogt < <email address hidden>> Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:30:55 +0200