Bug#337945: format fails to build in postinst
Bas Zoetekouw <bas@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi Frank!
>
> You wrote:
>
>> > Hmm, weird. dpkg only prompted me about one file, which I let it replace:
>>
>> It's a jadetex conffile, therefore the question must have been asked
>> much earlier.
>
> ah, I see:
>
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 271 2005-03-09 14:05 40jadetex.cnf.dpkg-dist
>
> After copying that one over the 40jadetex.cnf, tetex installs fine.
>
> Still, I'm hesitant about closing the bug. Couldn't tetex-bin just
> emit a warning about the jadetex thing, but otherwise install fine?
I don't see how this could be possible. The jadetex format loads the
latex format when it is used. During the upgrade from tetex-bin_2.0.2
to tetex-bin_3.0, the executable used to create the latex format has
changed (from /usr/bin/etex which was *not* a symlink in 2.0.2 to
/usr/bin/pdfetex), and therefore the latex format must be regenerated.
Now jadetex (the jadetex format file) won't be able to load the latex
format properly - it expects it to be created by the same program as the
jadetex format (old etex), but in fact it was pdfetex. The only
solution to this is that during the upgrade of teTeX to 3.0, it must
recreate all formats that depend on formats that teTeX provides, and
jadetex is one of them.
Why can't we just ignore this error? Well, if we did, the system would
show that tetex-bin is installed and configured, and jadetex is
installed and configured. Yet, jadetex cannot be used, and packages
that Depend on jadetex because they want to use it cannot do this.
Since it is impossible for a postinst script to tell dpkg "There was an
error, but it comes from package A; please mark package A as not
properly configured", the only thing we can do is let tetex-bin's
postinst fail. And you wouldn't gain much, anyway: The fact is that
you can use latex just fine, but not jadetex, and it doesn't matter
whether dpkg gives an error and marks tetex-bin as unconfigured, or also
gives an error, but blaims jadetex.
> Or even check for the outdated jadetex file (or maybe jadetex should
> do that itself)?
We can of course check, but what should we do? We can't overwrite it
with the dpkg-dist file without risking to overwrite local changes. We
also can't edit it, because it is a conffile which may not be changed by
maintainer scripts.
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer
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