Re: Bug#518737: dpkg: install-info should still exit zero if info document is not found

[Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>]

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009, Neil Williams wrote:
> The packages themselves have the Emdebian version string (em[0-9]) suffix but have
> no changes to the maintainer scripts (to maintain compatibility with Debian).
> 
> To simplify Grip installations, install-info needs to not halt the installation of
> a package merely because the info document has been removed from the package. A
> warning or message is not needed either - users of Emdebian Grip know that info
> documents and manpages are not going to exist in the Grip packages. Retaining binary
> compatibility with Debian does mean that individual packages can be installed from
> Debian where the user wants to have the extra files and apt-pinning can do the rest.
> 
> update-alternatives has now gained this support and it would be much appreciated if
> install-info could be quiet about missing info documents whilst still supporting
> those Debian packages that the user may still wish to install.

The plan is always to get rid of install-info inside dpkg, so asking us
for this change is not the right long-term solution. (And contrary to
update-alternatives, I don't think such a change make sense)

I would really suggest that you design a solution that doesn't require
the postinst snippet at all. A simple solution could be:
- have a package "install-info" register a file trigger on /usr/share/install-info/
- have other packages provide a .install-info file in that directory that
  tells how install-info should be called
- add a dh_installinfo helper to automatize the installation of this file
- have info readers depend on the new install-info package

Opinions ?

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog

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