Re: installer for non-free packages in contrib
On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 01:08:34PM +0200, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> a tapot? :
> > On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 09:35:45AM +0200, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> > > Would it be acceptable to fill a bug against each installer that do
> > > not build a proper debian package when installing non-free software?
> >
> > How can they do so? Installing a package with 'dpkg -i' in the postinst
> > of another package isn't possible, since dpkg's status area is locked.
>
> At this point, the question is not how to do it
I think it absolutely is. If something is impossible to do correctly
then filing [1] bugs against packages claiming that they don't do it is
rather unfair.
[1] P.S. When talking about bugs the verb is "file", not "fill", and
"filing", not "filling". This seems to be a common mistake.
> (anyway, I think there are several way to do it, it's not a big deal).
OK. How does one create an installer package which correctly does the
following:
* creates a Debian package for the thing it's installing
* installs that package in such a way that it's registered in dpkg's
database
* doesn't rely on internal implementation details of dpkg such as
/var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list files
* when the installer package is considered by dpkg as fully
configured, the package it's installing is also fully configured
* if some error happens when installing the created package, the
installer package will throw an error during configuration
? I think that's a minimal specification for a correct installer package
which does its work by creating Debian packages; unless you think that
it's better for the installer package to spit out a .deb somewhere which
you then have to install separately, which seems to me like a step
backwards in convenience.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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