Re: Adding lzma to dpkg's Pre-Depends

[Lionel Elie Mamane <lionel@mamane.lu>]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 08:05:06AM +0300, Guillem Jover wrote:

> As per policy 3.5 I'm bringing this up here. I'd like to add lzma to
> dpkg's Pre-Depends, so that we can use lzma compressed packages
> after lenny w/o having to add an lzma Pre-Depends on each .deb
> package compressed that way.


I'm not totally clear on why it needs to be a Pre-Depends and not
simply a Depends. I expect dpkg cannot act on packages before it is
configured (it has not created its database yet), so the "Pre-Depends
must be satisfied before package is unpacked" effect is of no use. I
don't think dpkg's preinst would need lzma, either.

Please explain.


On the more general issue of lzma-compresses packages, I find a 34MB
RAM requirement quite hefty for general purpose use; that is, unless
we restrict lzma compression to packages that wouldn't make sense on
hardware with so little RAM anyway (such as e.g. OpenOffice.org, but
nothing in base, nothing one would install on a pure router /
lightweight server such as iptables, kernels, FTP/HTTP daemons, ...).


-- 
Lionel