Re: Bug#528892: please add info-dir-section to your info files

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 04:26:02 +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 22:24:43 +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 09:54:35PM +0200, Norbert Preining wrote:
> > > On Sat, 16 May 2009, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > > > Does Lenny includes this trigger ?
> > > 
> > > > Did you consider what will when a partial lenny to squeeze update is made ?
> 
> Yes, most of the plan has been drafted with the idea of inflicting
> minimal disruption.
> 
> > > Yes. If the new texinfo/install-info is installed it will work on the 
> > > triggers. Packages that are old will call install-info which is a wrapper
> > > and will do nothing. If the old install-info/texinfo is installed then
> > > the normal install-info procedure is called.
> > 
> > What happens if a new package is installed but not the new install-info ?
> 
> The info files are not usually ‘readable’ w/o an info-reader. The new
> info-reader Providing packages will Depend on the install-info package,
> so they will get a generated dir when installed. And the first dpkg
> version to stop shipping the real install-info will Break all old
> info-readers versions not Depending on the install-info package. Does
> this resolve your concerns?

Actually, no, I guess it does not. In case the user has no upgraded
dpkg nor any of the info-readers, the user could upgrade a info
providing package and that would not call install-info anymore (in
this particular case things would probably just work, as the info dir
section is already on the dir file, but not for new info files, or
renamed files).

So there's several options that come to mind for that:

  * We don't care, and expect users might miss docs on the dir file in
    some cases or need to upgrade dpkg or any of the info-readers.
  * Make info providing packages depend on install-info.
  * Make info providing packages Break old dpkgs.
  * Not remove calls to install-info from packages until squeeze+1
    (and make install-info wrappers not warn in some conditions).

Probably the sanest and safest is the last one, but slowest and with
less immediate benefits. OTOH not registering some docs on the dir
file is not that grave, as they will get readded whe upgrading.
So I'd go for the "we don't care", but would not mind being more
conservative.

regards,
guillem