Re: dpkg 1.1.1elf: many changes, more to come
David Engel writes ("Re: dpkg 1.1.1elf: many changes, more to come"):
> You didn't reply on debian-devel. Is that what you intended?
I noticed shortly after sending it, and sent another copy. I take it
it's OK for me to send my reply to your reply to debian-devel, too ...
> > > likely candidate followed by ld.so and libc5. If dpkg aborted when it
> > > encountered an unknown control file entry instead of quietly ignoring
> > > it, the problem could be solved by *judiciously* creating new entries.
> >
> > This problem won't happen again because you can just say `Pre-Depends:
> > dpkg (>whatever)'; I think that after a while we can remove the checks
> > for dpkg --assert-support-predepends.
>
> You didn't comment on having dpkg abort on unknown control file
> entries. I really think this would be a good thing.
I disagree. We have introduced many new control file entries, for
most of which it is better for a dpkg that doesn't understand them to
ignore them than to barf. The only useful thing that could be done
along these lines, I think, would be to have some kind of flag in
control file entries that would allow dpkg to tell whether it was
essential for it to understand them.
However, I think that the Pre-Depends mechanism is better: the user of
such a control file field can easily put in a Pre-Depends header,
which will tell a user or program who reads the Packages file, or a
user who sees the error from dpkg, exactly which version of dpkg is
required to install the package.
...
> Checking in libc5 is not sufficient. ld.so requires ELF support also
> but does not depend on nor need libc5. If anything, libc5 needs to
> depend on ld.so.
Right ...
> Here is what I propose.
>
> I will create a very small package called elf-ok. It will not
> configure itself unless ELF support is provided in the kernel. I will
> then build new revisions of ld.so which pre-depends on elf-ok, libc5
> which pre-depends on the ld.so and base packages which pre-depend on
> the new libc5.
Is it really necessary to have this awkward small package ? Why not
just do the test in ld.so, and have libc5 depend (not pre-depend,
surely ?) on the appropriate version of ld.so ?
Ian.
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