Re: Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.15.7.2) for dpkg-maintscript-helper okay?

[Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Mon, 07 Mar 2011, Anders Kaseorg wrote:
> > So in this case the pre-dependency should *not* be set, as it only 
> > serves to complicate the upgrade path.
> 
> If this becomes the consensus of debian-devel, there are two things that 
> should probably be changed:
> 
> • The section of the dpkg-maintscript-helper(1) about the Pre-Depends 
> being “unconditionally required” should be clarified.

You're misparsing the documentation. It says "using
[dpkg-maintscript-helper] unconditionally requires a pre-dependency" but
then it advise you to avoid the Pre-Depends by protecting the call with
a test:
           if dpkg-maintscript-helper supports <command>; then
               dpkg-maintscript-helper <command> ...
           fi

> • In Debhelper, dh_installdeb shouldn’t add this Pre-Depends automatically 
> via ${misc:Pre-Depends} (see #574443).

I think it's fine for debhelper to do it automatically but maybe it could offer
an option to switch to the protected variant and not set the Pre-Depends.

I don't really think that the Pre-Depends on dpkg are problematic. We must just
ensure that we don't get any Pre-Depends loop with dpkg's (pre|)dependencies.

Of course, the pre-depends become mostly irrelevant when the version in
oldstable supports it but that's not the case yet. And it's not unusual for
people to try an upgrade that skips a release... even if we don't officially
support it, it's not a reason to break them when there's no really need to.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

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