Mplayer update problems

[aay]

When I try and do an apt-get -s -t unstable install mplayer-686 I now am told that mplayer-686 depends on mplayer-586. On one of my boxes I went ahead and let both the 586 and the 686 versions be installed, but it borked mplayer. I don't want to try this on my laptop if it's going to create problems for me here also. Has anyone else had this problem? Why should 686 depend on 586? It's never been this way before.

[aay]

Well I went ahead and installed everything and it's working. May have just been my other machine.

[Markus]

I had mplayer on hold for a couple of weeks, then I uninstalled the mozilla plugin and updated which also gave an update for mplayer and with the --ignore-hold switch it finally upgraded, so I don't know if it was the update or mozilla plugin that allowed the upgrade. IIRC it also installed 586 but didn't bork anything, so I'll have to see what happens if I uninstall the 586 when I get home.

[Markus]

Well, got home. Nothing wrong with mplayer, plays fine. But trying to remove -586:
root@fujibox:/# apt-get -s --purge remove mplayer-586
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
mplayer-586* mplayer-686* mplayer-fonts*

The mplayer-686 seems to be some kind of dummy package though:
root@fujibox:/# apt-cache show mplayer-686
Package: mplayer-686
Priority: extra
Section: graphics
Installed-Size: 88
Maintainer: Christian Marillat <marillat.christian@wanadoo.fr>
Architecture: i386
Source: mplayer
Version: 1:1.0-pre3cvs20040323-0.0
Depends: mplayer-586
Filename: dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/mplayer-686_1.0-pre3cvs20040323-0.0_i386.deb
Size: 37398
MD5sum: fef26c9df121f14a7bb1672a1947c71b
Description: transitional dummy package which can be safely removed
Dummy package to upgrade to the new package mplayer-586