Bug#487908: ubuntu-desktop: Failure while configuring base packages.

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

retitle 487908 debootstrap: can't --include packages involving non-required Pre-Depends
severity 487908 wishlist
thanks

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 08:01:50PM -0700, Jack Bates wrote:
> I'm trying to build an Ubuntu directory tree with debootstrap:
> 
> ket% sudo debootstrap --components=main,restricted,universe,multiverse
> --include=ubuntu-desktop hardy hardy-chroot
> [...]
> 
> However this currently complains:
> 
> W: Failure while configuring base packages.  This will be attempted 5
> times.
> 
> My current workaround is to skip the --include=ubuntu-desktop option,
> and after debootstrap completes, to run:
> 
> ket% sudo chroot hardy-chroot aptitude -DR install ubuntu-desktop
> [...]
> 
> I'm not sure why debootstrap doesn't like the ubuntu-desktop package
> (rather, one of the many packages on which it depends). The
> bootstrap.log is attached. Please let me know how I can provide more
> information, or debug this issue...

At the time, libx11-6 declared a Pre-Depends relationship on x11-common.
This means that x11-common must be configured before libx11-6 is
unpacked, and, at the moment, debootstrap is not capable of handling
this situation. I've retitled the bug accordingly.

(You'd have seen the same problem at the time if you tried to --include
any package depending, directly or indirectly, on libx11-6 from the
Debian archive; this is not an Ubuntu-specific problem. The Pre-Depends
has since been removed from Debian and is thus gone from later versions
of Ubuntu as well.)

I do think this is a bug, but it requires some thought to fix properly
and thus I'm marking it wishlist. However, I'm documenting the problem
in debootstrap(8) for now, for the next version of debootstrap:

       --include=alpha,beta
              Comma  separated list of packages which will be added to
              download  and  extract  lists.   Beware  that  including
              packages  that declare a Pre-Depends relationship on any
              package  that  is  not  in  the  "required"  set   (i.e.
              "Priority:   required"),  or  that  depend  directly  or
              indirectly on packages that do so, will  not  work;  you
              will  need  to  install  such  packages separately after
              debootstrap has completed.

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@debian.org]