.:Slackel - Hellenic Linux Distribution::.

At 15 February, we got a huge system update, related to new glibc which went without any issue, other than the useless "NetworkManager" was pulled again and I had to uninstall it manually. Yesterday, in another update, aaa_glibc_solibs was pulled as well, and I remember djemos said we should not have that package installed because it may break the system and it is not part of Slackel - but that was back on Slackel 7.0. What about that package now?

Hi Papasot. I am glad that upgrade went fine with you without problems. This is not happened to my updates on 64 and 32 bit Slackel installations.
I done the upgrade and while aaa_libraries was been updating, the system break because glibc-2.33 links to other packages did not found. So i had to boot with slackel usb real installation i have and install glibc with sudo installpkg --root
So users had to first upgrade glibc which excluded and then continue with other upgrades. And i am sure system will break to all of them because they will not do it. Not many know how to repair their system using a slackel live usb.
So i created a dep file aaa_libraries.dep where added a line aaa_glibc-solibs so first aaa_glibc-solibs will installed and also aaa_elflibs will uninstalled (because of aaa_libraries.con file) if user has many weeks to do the upgrade and upgrade will done like done for you.
This is well commented in Slackware ChangeLog.txt
"This package has been renamed from glibc-solibs, which helps avoid trouble
if someone upgrades using "upgradepkg --install-new */*.txz" by upgrading
this package before aaa_libraries. Otherwise, if aaa_libraries is upgraded
first any libraries in it that are linked against a newer version of glibc
than the one installed on the system would refuse to load."

I always upgrade glibc, glibc-i18n before anything else, if I see them listed in excluded packages. Then anything else in excluded, in this case aaa_base, then normal packages to be upgraded.
I was aware of what aaa_glibc_solibs is, and why it was renamed like that. However, in my very old (but always updated) Slackel 32-bit system, that package was not pulled and it is not installed. See for yourself:



In all my other Slackel systems that package was pulled and installed, but not in this one, and yet everything works fine. So if I understand well, we now need aaa_glibc_solibs? And if so, why in one of my systems it was not pulled, and the system works flawlessly anyway? Is it because I installed glibc first? All aaa_glibc_solibs does is to prevent system break when the user doesn't install glibc separately before anything else?

This happened because you did the upgrade before i add the dep package and also update was successful because you first upgrade glibc.
I try to make slackel easy to upgrade even for new users. Usually new users do not use slapt-get to upgrade the system and just use gslapt so they can break the system since glibc will not installed first.

aaa_glibc_solibs does is to prevent system break when the user doesn't install glibc separately before anything else?

Yes
I try to make tests imagine what user will do and try to help him to not break the system.
Also Slackel is Slackware current based now and not Salix compatible. When Salix will do a new release based in Slackware 15.0 then will be compatible but then sometime in the future will not be compatible again.

Ok, I installed aaa_glibc_solibs manually in that old Slackel system. You do well to make the system easier to maintain for new users. So I guess we now don't have to do special care for glibc anymore.
As for the upcoming Slackware 15.0, I guess not much will change for Slackel users, we already have Slackware 15.0 "alpha" according to Current Changelogs. Once Salix 15.0 will be ready, it will be (almost) the same as Slackel for one day maximum - then the two will start to deviate again.

type sudo spi --show aaa_libraries
and you'll see these two lines
Package Required: aaa_glibc-solibs
Package Conflicts: aaa_elflibs
User can run first sudo slapt-get --upgrade and then sudo slapt-get -i glibc. Or the opposite. In both cases system will not break.