Re: essential packages and Pre-Depends
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On 16 Feb 1998, James Troup wrote:
> gzip & tar etc. are a special case;
> [ ... ]
> They are extremely essential;
I thought there was just one kind of essential packages, namely those
having the "Essential: Yes" flag. Now it seems there are two types
of essential packages, those which are essential, and those which are
"extremely essential". Please, define "extremely essential" and why should
not we put the Pre-Depends on essential packages.
> diff, procps etc. are not.
But they are essential also. If they are essential, they should work all
the time, because they may be used in any prerm, postrm, preinst or
postinst script. And all the time is *all* the time, not just between
succesive runs of dpkg. Please, consider the following example:
Package A depends on library C, package B uses A in the preinst script.
A is essential. We issue the following command:
dpkg -i A.deb B.deb C.deb
Will B's preinst always work? I don't think so.
This upgrade will be *much* safer by making A to Pre-Depend on C.
> It clearly states in policy that the use of Pre-Depends *must* be
> discussed and consensus reached on debian.devel before being used[1],
I thought this was for ordinary packages, not for essential packages.
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