RFC: dpkg and handling of the Unconfigured state
Hi there,
Currently, the "unconfigured state" for a Debian package is AFAIK only
reflected by its state in dpkg's status files. This leads to programs
that are installed in the system, thus can be lauchned by some user,
even if their run cannot complete, either for an obvious reason like a
missing shared lib, or for any other reason that will have justified
the dependency which caused the package to be left unconfigured.
Running a program in such a package may lead to unpredictable
results, though in the most simple case the user just gets an error
from the dynamic linker.
A solution I see to this situation would be to have all executable
permissions unset when a package is unpacked, and then set as
specified in the package when the package has been configured. It
seems to me that all cases of dependencies would be fulfilled with
such a mechanism: a package would only get its X bits set when all
packages it depends on would be configured (ie, when it applies, with
their own X bits set).
Note that this would advocate for essential packages to be configured
immediately after being unpacked, or the pakcaging system may break.
Or maybe essential packages may be given special treatment in this
case, in that they would not be subject to these manipulations.
This proposal only concerns executables. Maybe other things can be
done, eg. for shared libs, but I'm no expert here.
Any comments on this ?
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