Re: dist-upgrade strangeness: dependencies not deconfigured

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Thorsten Glaser writes ("Re: dist-upgrade strangeness: dependencies not deconfigured"):
> Norbert Preining <preining <at> logic.at> writes:
> > In the trigger program we already check that texlive base is in proper
> > state (ii in dpkg listing), but that seems not to be enough.
> 
> ISTR reading somewhere that Depends do not mean that the dependency is
> always configured before the package depending on it is configured, but
> only that it once was configured successfully.

This is true.  If A -Depends-> B and A is "installed" then at the time
when A became "installed", B was "installed", and B has never been
worse than "unpacked" at any time since then.

The alternative would make it impossible to upgrade B without
deconfiguring A first.  The resulting churn would be very undesirable.

Ian.