Re: Adding lzma to dpkg's Pre-Depends
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 11:44:30PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Steve Langasek writes ("Re: Adding lzma to dpkg's Pre-Depends"):
> > On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 09:28:01PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote:
> > > What advantage would we (as in Debian) have if dpkg pre-depends on lzma,
> > > instead of the packages pre-depending on lzma?
> > If dpkg internalizes the lzma support (by static linking, dynamic linking,
> > or depending on the lzma binary), and packages which use lzma pre-depend on
> > the correct version of dpkg, then the pre-dependency on dpkg is transitional
> > and can go away after a release cycle.
> No, unless the dpkg.deb binary package were to actually _contain_ the
> lzma code, dpkg would have to Pre-Depend on it forever (or it would
> have to be made Essential). Dynamic linking or expecting to use the
> lzma binary from another package would not suffice.
"The pre-dependency on dpkg", not "the pre-dependency on lzma".
> > What is fundamentally different about lzma that it should be handled
> > differently than gzip and bzip2?
> lzma is much more of a minority interest than gzip. We do not expect
> ever to transition the entire archive to use gzip. The approach taken
> with bzip2 was a mistake and should not be repeated.
That's a new argument I haven't heard before. *Why* was it a mistake to do
this the way it was done with bzip2?
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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