Bug#35691: dpkg: New package dependency: "affects"

[Santiago Vila Doncel <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Wed, 7 Apr 1999, Simon Richter wrote:

> Package: dpkg
> Version: 1.4.0.34
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> I'd like to propose a new dependancy type which could possibly be described
> best with the keyword "affects". The problem behind this is that with slink,
> many packages that register new mimetypes do not depend on mime-support,
> and thus get configured before mime-support. Since the /etc/mailcap file is
> not present at configuration time, they assume that mime-support is not
> installed, and skip this step. Thus, about 50% of the available mimetypes
> are not registered.

I think this particular problem would be solved by:

1. Making /etc/mailcap not to be a conffile but instead generate a
default one in the postinst when it does not exist.

2. Making the generation of the default /etc/mailcap by
mime-support.postinst to be done by a new script, mime-support-conf.

3. Making the install-mime script to call mime-support-conf to create a
default /etc/mailcap if it does not exist, before registering any app.


This way install-mime would not have to be configured first.


I suggest that this bug is reassigned to mime-support as a technical
suboptimality in the current implementation, because it may be solved
without the need of a new dpkg field.

Thanks.