Re: (fwd) Draft spec for new dpkg "triggers" feature

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:

> Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch> writes:
>
>> Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
>>> I guess a failed trigger should leave the triggering package in a non
>>> "installed" state as well so it retriggers on every configure run and
>>> can be listed by dpkg as a source for failure.
>>
>> Yes, but it should be listed.  Maybe the trigger itself should have a
>> "failed" state, too.  Then, if it is requested again, it will be run
>> once first *before* new triggers are registered.  This means that only
>> the really buggy package will be in "failed-config" state, the others
>> are just unpacked/half-configured.
>>
>> Regards, Frank
>
> Bad idea. Say foobar 1.0 is installed already. Blafase 1.0 gets
> installed and triggers foobar and fails due to a bug in foobar.
>
> Now you want to install foobar 1.1 to fix the bug.
>
> If dpkg runs the trigers again first then it will just fail again and
> again and never update to a working foobar version.

I agree, I missed that.  Still it is not a reason not to tell the user
which package(s) activated the trigger.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)