Re: need input: essential packages and pre-depends
On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, Christian Schwarz wrote:
>
> Recall, that there was a discussion on this topic between Feb 9 and Feb
> 18, with subject line "awk: essential virtual package?"
>
> We discussed the suggestion that all essential packages have to use
> Pre-Depends instead of Depends.
I have effectively implemented this in Deity's ordering routine. It
automatically considers all dependants of essential packages as
pre-depends and immediate configure.
There is a downside, to satisfy a pre-depends requires that you be able to
immediately configure the target package, which means all of it's
dependancies must be installed as well, and so on. This increases the
chance of a critical loop forming and the package being non-trivial to
install.
We are already starting to get more of these loops as people try to make
their pacakges safer, just yesterday a new kbd was uploaded that loops
with sysvinit.
Therefore, if we are going to make this policy we are going to need better
policy on loop handling and possibly upgrades to dpkg.
I'm not sure if this is the best option, technically it still leaves
problems (upgrades of essential depends) and it makes the system less
likely to install correctly with the current dpkg/dselect setup.
Jason
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