Downgraded packages with Slack upgrade
 

I had discussed this in a previous thread, but I don't remember coming to any resolution so I thought I'd try again to figure something out. I'm going to be upgrading my Slack version again, and I'd like to avoid the biggest annoyance with my past upgrade: when going through and upgrading every package (as part of UPGRADE.TXT), every package gets replaced, even those with a higher version number. For example, I keep gaim up to date, but the upgrade will downgrade the new version to whatever package is in the new version of Slack. Is there a way to directly avoid this, or, if not, at least a way to see a list of which existing packages were replaced with new ones so I can manually go through and check for downgrades?

Along the same lines, is there a list of newly installed packages, so I can see things like firefox/thunderbird packages being installed when I already have them on my system, duplicate packages being installed for checkinstall packages I already have but for whatever reason didn't get named right, etc.?

What does everyone else to do avoid these issues?

Here's what I do:

Add your initials to packages you create
Use SWareT to upgrade
Pay attention when my initials pop up

Same goes for third party stuff. They should have initials in the package name. If they don't, add them before installing.

Check out /var/log/removed_packages. You can grep the word upgraded, sort by date, etc. if you like.

Most would say the ChangeLog. Me too, but nowadays, I use the RSS feed. Really simple method for checking updates. Same thing, but easier to notice changes.

You can avoid such problems by:

• giving unique/non-conflicting names to your custom or third party packages, like adding underscore to them (gaim_-1.5.1.i486-1, mozilla-firefox_-1.6-i686-3xyz, etc.) upgradepkg */*.tgz won't touch them.
• use some third party tools like slackpkg or slapt-get. You can "blacklist" them to prevent their upgrade or AFAIK slapt-get even checks and compares package versions.
• after a complete upgrade rebuild your packages against updated system. It will ensure in addition there won't be any potential broken dependencies.

Thanks for the advice all.

How do you get the RSS for the ChangeLog, anyway?