Re: Bug#4895: gcc installs before binutils and fails

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Brian White:
> My point was that if "gcc" required something in "binutils" to be fully
> configured during gcc's installation (I can see no reason why this should
> be the case), then "pre-depends" would be the proper solution.

Please RTFM.

Ian.

>From the programmers' manual, 8.2:

   Pre-Depends
...       
          dselect checks for predependencies when it is doing an       
          installation run, and will attempt to find the packages which
          are required to be installed first and do so in the right
          order.

          However, this process is slow (because it requires repeated   
          invocations of dpkg) and troublesome (because it requires  
          guessing where to find the appropriate files).            

          For these reasons, and because this field imposes restrictions
          on the order in which packages may be unpacked (which can be
          difficult for installations from multipart media, for example),
          Pre-Depends should be used sparingly, preferably only by       
          packages whose premature upgrade or installation would hamper
          the ability of the system to continue with any upgrade that
          might be in progress.

>From the policy manual:

  3.1.4 Pre-Depends and the Essential flag

   Do not use Pre-Depends or Essential: yes unless your package is     
   absolutely vital to the functioning of the system and the installation
   of other packages. Do not do either of these things without           
   consultation with the distribution maintainers or on debian-devel.
          
   Usually, neither of these fields should not be used unless removing a
   package really will completely hose the system, making it impossible  
   to recover by (re)installing packages with dpkg.                     
          
   Essential should not be used for a shared library package - the      
   dependencies will prevent its premature removal, and we need to be
   able to remove it when it has been superseded.             
          
   It is not necessary for other packages to declare any dependencies   
   they have on other packages which are marked Essential.                      

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