Re: Aborting installation on unsupported systems
Hi,
Andrey Rahmatullin:
> On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 09:28:45PM +0100, Barak A. Pearlmutter wrote:
> > The package "ikarus", another programming language implementation,
> > also requires SSE2 support.
> > There is a check in the preinst script which aborts installation if
> > sse2 is unavailable.
> One of my packages works only on certain CPUs and by design it fails to
> start on others. The package starts its initscript on install, so the
> installation fails on unsupported hardware. I have a grave bug #738927
> asking me to fix this behavior and I was told by someone on IRC to leave
> it as is. Now I see there are other people doing this so I think I should
> ask here for more opinions.
>
IMHO it's perfectly reasonable to be able to install a package which cannot
immediately run.
Another example would be a program which needs a lot of RAM or disk space
to work. Or a reachable database server.
But when I prepare a VM image for that program, I may not yet have
the RAM available, or I pre-generate a backup system image, or …
You might want to pop up a preinst debconf notice which tells the admin
that the package will not run here (with an option to fail the install
if it's an honest mistake).
--
-- Matthias Urlichs
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