Re: Next upload 2007-05-03 (dpkg 1.14.0)

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 12:06:12 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Guillem Jover writes ("Next upload 2007-05-03 (dpkg 1.14.0)"):
> > The other issue is with update-alternatives, due to some code
> > refactoring, it now will exit 1, when asked to do actions on
> > non-existing link-groups. I think this behaviour is more correct than
> > the previous one. So I'll be filing a bug report against
> > dictionaries-common, which is the only package I've stumbled upon
> > failing on this. I could "fix" this somehow if people think this
> > change is not acceptable.
> 
> I'm not sure I follow.  What do you mean by a link group being
> `nonexisting' ?  In my view a link group exists iff there is any
> alternative providing it, but thus it can only be said to exist at a
> particular time on a particular system.

Sorry if the explanation was confusing, I was using the terminology that
can be found in the man page. I was referring to link group as the
name that gets used on commands like --display and the file describing
such link group under /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/. Not a specific
instance of a link group.

> Which particular operations does dictionaries-common do that you are
> going to make fail ?

In this particular case --auto, but here you can see some of the
differences and inconsistencies in the current version.

With 1.13.25 u-a:

  pulsar:~# update-alternatives --display foo; echo $?
  No alternatives for foo.
  1
  pulsar:~# update-alternatives --list foo; echo $?
  0
  pulsar:~# update-alternatives --remove-all foo; echo $?
  0
  pulsar:~# update-alternatives --auto foo; echo $?
  0
  pulsar:~# update-alternatives --config foo; echo $?
  No alternatives for foo.
  0
  pulsar:~# update-alternatives --remove foo /bin/foo; echo $?
  0
  pulsar:~# update-alternatives --set foo /bin/foo; echo $?
  No alternatives for foo.
  0

With 1.14.0 u-a all previous commands return:

  No alternatives for foo.
  1

regards,
guillem