In addition to my Debian / Stretch computer, I still operate two Debian / Jessie computers. Those latter two computers were subscribed to the Debian Security repository, as well as to the standard Debian / Jessie repository. Unfortunately, the package manager on one of my Debian / Jessie computers had made me aware of a conflict which existed, due to an update which Debian Security is pushing, to a package and its related packages, all belonging to:
liqt4-dev
The version which Debian Security is trying to install is:
4:4.8.6+git64-g5dc8b2b+dfsg-3+deb8u2
But, the version which the rest of Debian / Jessie was using, was:
4:4.8.6+git64-g5dc8b2b+dfsg-3+deb8u1
The problem was the fact that, if I told my package manager to go ahead with its suggested updates, doing so would have forced me to reject a long, long list of packages essential to my system, including many KDE-4-related packages. Now, I can just ignore that this problem exists, and rely on my package manager again not installing packages, that would break my system, on a daily basis. But this would turn into a very unsafe practice in the long run. And so, the only safe course of action for me currently seemed to be, to unsubscribe from Debian / Security instead.
(Update 17h55 : )
I have resubscribed to the Debian Security repository in question, and re-attempted the update, to find that this time, it worked. I can think of 2 possible reasons why it might not have worked the first time:
- My unattended-upgrades script is configured to break up an update into smaller pieces, and because this update involves a large number (over 20) of Qt 4 packages, this in itself could have broken the ability to perform the update, or
- Debian Security may not have put all the involved updates ‘out there’ on its servers, to be downloadable in one shot, even though every Qt 4 package needs to be updated, in order for any of the updates to succeed. But, only hours later, all the required packages may have become available (on the servers).
I rather think that it was due to reason (2) and not reason (1) above.
Dirk