Re: dpkg with new Essential
On 2013-12-09 04:55 +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-12-09 at 13:56 +1100, Craig Small wrote:
>> As pidof is moving from sysvinit-utils to procps-base in the next
>> release, I want to check I've got the way dpkg handles flags correctly.
>>
>> procps-base will contain the new pidof and will be
>> Essential: yes
>> Breaks: sysvinit-utils << 2.88dsf-43
>>
>> Now, if there is a new Essential package, is that automatically
>> installed?
>
> Yes, apt automatically installs new essential packages (possibly
> dependent on score).
Only if you run "apt-get dist-upgrade", and aptitude does not do this at
all. So the new sysvinit-utils needs a pre-dependency on procps.
>> What happens with the Essential and Breaks, one says "install this now"
>> the other says "dont install this if a verison of sysvinit-utils is
>> there". That's a bit of a conflict.
>
> I don't know the answer to this.
It forces temporary deconfiguration of sysvinit-utils which is not the
end of the world but prints a slightly scaring warning message to the
user.
>> Is Replaces a better way of doing this as procps-base is replacing
>> one file from sysvinit-utils?
>
> You need to use both Replaces and Breaks. See policy section 7.3.
Actually only the Replaces is strictly necessary, the Breaks covers the
case where procps is downgraded to a non-Essential version. Without the
Breaks, the old sysvinit-utils does not need to be deconfigured.
Cheers,
Sven
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