Bug#518737: dpkg: install-info should still exit zero if info document is not found
Package: dpkg
Version: 1.14.25
Severity: normal
Various GNU packages handle info documents in maintainer scripts via install-info
but Emdebian Grip removes those info documents, just as it removes manpages and
other documentation, to save space. The files are removed from the packages and
the reduced packages made available via http://www.emdebian.org/grip to handle
bandwidth and temporary space issues on the devices running Grip.
Currently, Grip needs to replace install-info from dpkg with an empty script because
install-info halts the entire installation if a single info document is missing.
The packages themselves have the Emdebian version string (em[0-9]) suffix but have
no changes to the maintainer scripts (to maintain compatibility with Debian).
To simplify Grip installations, install-info needs to not halt the installation of
a package merely because the info document has been removed from the package. A
warning or message is not needed either - users of Emdebian Grip know that info
documents and manpages are not going to exist in the Grip packages. Retaining binary
compatibility with Debian does mean that individual packages can be installed from
Debian where the user wants to have the extra files and apt-pinning can do the rest.
update-alternatives has now gained this support and it would be much appreciated if
install-info could be quiet about missing info documents whilst still supporting
those Debian packages that the user may still wish to install.
This would make info management as simple as manpage management where man-db really
doesn't care if a package used to contain a manpage but does not contain one anymore,
it just does the right thing and carries on without halting the installation.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_GB.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii coreutils 7.1-2 The GNU core utilities
ii libc6 2.9-4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii lzma 4.43-14 Compression method of 7z format in
dpkg recommends no packages.
Versions of packages dpkg suggests:
ii apt 0.7.20.2 Advanced front-end for dpkg
-- no debconf information
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