Re: the Great X Reorganization, package splits, and renaming

[Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com>]

Jonathan P Tomer <phouchg@cif.rochester.edu> wrote:
> why not just have dummy packages delete themselves in postinst, if we're
> going to use them?

That can be done.. but it's not quite so simple (dpkg isn't re-entrant
unless the nested invocations are read-only).  I suppose the trivial
implementation would be (in postinst)

(
	until dpkg --remove xfntwhatever; do
		sleep 120
	done >/var/tmp/removexfntwhatever.log 2>&1 &
)

[The parenthesis mean that the until loop has init as parent, rather than
dpkg, and unless the system is rebooted the package will eventually get
removed.  Perhaps --purge should be used instead of --remove.  Perhaps 120
should be replaced with $(perl -le 'srand; print int 600*rand').  Etc.]

> the real solution of course is to add a Replaces: or some such to dpkg,
> because it really does happen that things change names as they evolve.

And, currently, dpkg is brittle (the implementation has several
conflicting designs), which is why we're still talking about slink and
aren't freezing potato.

Until dpkg is fixed we have to live with its warts.

-- 
Raul