Re: need input: essential packages and pre-depends
On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> 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.
[snip]
Ian, could you please comment on this issue?
I haven't received any objections yet, so I'm planning such a check for
lintian and will prepare a proposal for a policy change. However, it would
be good to hear the opinion of the dpkg maintainer first :)
Thanks,
Chris
-- Christian Schwarz
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