Re: predepends on libc6?

[dark@xs4all.nl (Richard Braakman)]

James Troup wrote:

> And please don't judge other maintainers by your own standards, I for
> one, won't add gratuitous program calls to my postinsts just because
> someone said I should.  Perhaps you would, that doesn't mean that 90%
> of the shared library maintainers would.

So why did you add the call to ldconfig?  So far you have not given
any reasons.  In fact, you seem to expect me to take your word for it,
which is exactly what you object to here.

> I also think someone might have noticed by know if this vast majority
> of shared libraries were doing it wrong; don't you?

Not if the call is merely unnecessary.

> > If these packages are doing something wrong, then we have a problem.
> A bug, dear, the word is a bug.

I am not your dear until you learn to be nice.

> > So far I have not had any problems with them.
> 
> Others have. RTFBA (#14212).

Finally, the bug report number I asked for.

> BTW, even David, the ld.so author &
> maintainer, says the packaging manual is wrong; are you *so* confident
> you're right and everybody else is wrong that you're going to tell him
> he's wrong too?

I am not confident that I am right.  I am not confident that the packaging
manual is wrong.  Confidence is what one has after examining the arguments,
of which you have not provided any.  Well, until now, I'll give you that.

David Engel said: (#14212)
| The policy manual is wrong.  ldconfig should be called from the
| postinst script.  This is the only way to get the new library listed
| in /etc/ld.so.cache, which is a must if the library isn't in /lib or
| /usr/lib.

Obviously, this does not apply to libraries which install in /lib or
/usr/lib, such as libc6.

> I give up.

So soon?  We have strayed quite a way from my original question: what
is it that the libc6 postinst does, that makes it necessary for gzip
to pre-depend on it?
(And everything else used by dpkg: textutils, sed, util-linux, update,
tar, dpkg, findutils, shellutils, grep, mount, sysvutils, perl-base,
elvis-tiny, hostname, login, fileutils, bash, debianutils).
If libc6 could be restructured so that this is not necessary, then we
can lose a whole lot of predependencies in one swoop.

I do agree that gzip should get the predependency, since it doesn't
make sense for it to be inconsistent with all those other packages.
After all, it was only a nagging doubt.

Of course, we still need new text for the packaging manual.  Try as
I might, I can not find a bug report to dpkg that addresses this.

Richard Braakman


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