Re: If *-module depends on *-utils, should *-source recommend it?

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>

> Forget the impact on debootstrap, the impact on APT and dselect is
> pretty huge.  dpkg is designed to be able to unpack packages while their
> dependencies are not yet fulfilled.

But don't apt and dselect already invoke dpkg with special options to
the effect "I'm a front end, I know what I'm doing, just carry out
these operations, I take responsibility"?

> What's interesting is nobody has jumped in on this thread to point out
> that dpkg *has* a dependency field for forcing checking of dependencies
> before the package is unpacked.
> 	Pre-Depends

As far as I read the thread, this is not exactly what is being asked.

My immediate thought, too, is that it would be sensible for dpkg to
start by checking whether all dependencies of the packages it is being
asked to install *will* be available after everything is finished,
including the case where it is to be installed later in the run. A
pre-depends is stronger than that; it asks to have checked that
this-and-that dependency is *already* available and configured before
the preinst.

If given the front-end options dpkg would just omit this check, and
unpack and later perhaps fail in the postinst phase.

I can certainly accept and anticipate the objection that "that would
be difficult to implement, and nobody has cared to", but I still don't
see why such a behavior would be *wrong*, per se.

-- 
Henning Makholm                              Feet: Store in a cool dry place