Re: Bug #32888: I think this is a bug in apt.
On Sat, 6 Mar 1999, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 05, 1999 at 01:19:05PM +0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > How can you ensure that removing an essential package (be it base or
> > gzip) does not hose the system? (It will certainly do, by definition of
> > essential).
Sorry, I did not explain well:
Removing an essential package is always bad. Why should we allow the
user to remove "base" and not "gzip", for example? They are both
equally essential.
If APT lets the user to remove an essential package, people will
easily remove them by mistake, regardless of them being the old "base"
package or just another essential package.
I will reformulate the question: Why should APT make easy to remove
any essential package? (be it "base" or any other one).
> I thought that we agreed to have one of the current packages edit
> dpkg's database somehow so that removing base would not be so bad.
I think we have not agreed on that yet. In principle, dpkg's database
should not be edited directly.
However, even if we fixed this in base-files, how could we ensure that the
user does not try to remove "base" before base-files is upgraded?
It seems to me that the real danger is in APT, and it affects all
essential packages, not just "base".
APT is the one that lets you to remove an essential package.
Other dselect access methods do not.
Thanks.
--
"c0e264f0717e122d1a3afb5ba9152b69" (a truly random sig)
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