Re: Pseudo-essential packages and Pre-Depends
Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 07, 2010 at 11:57:28PM -0600, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
>>> I just realized that xz-utils and liblzma2 technically aren’t ready to
>>> be pseudo-essential: they use Depends: instead of Pre-Depends: for
>>> their dependencies.
>>
>> This doesn't follow. Only the essential packages themselves must be usable
>> when not configured, which is why those packages use pre-dependencies, not
>> dependencies. The packages which are *themselves* pre-dependencies don't
>> need to have their dependencies promoted to pre-dependencies.
>
> When dpkg is upgraded, the pre-dependency of dpkg on xz-utils would ensure
> that xz-utils is configured before the updated dpkg is unpacked. Such an
> upgrade is safe without any changes to xz-utils.
>
> If xz-utils is upgraded after that, however, IIUC the upgraded
> xz-utils might be unpacked before its dependencies.
In case anyone was in suspense, what I was missing is that the
problematic upgrade scenario doesn’t occur in a lenny->sid,
squeeze->sid, or sid->sid upgrade.
So the impact of my worries for dpkg is virtually nil; sorry to
trouble you (and thanks to Steve for the clue). I would still be
interested in feedback on this subject [1], but AIUI for xz-utils it
is academic now.
Jonathan
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2010/03/msg00034.html>
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