Bug#589996: Insane dependency on apt causes kernel to be removed on update

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> writes:

> On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 22:19 +0200, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>> Package: linux-base
>> Version: 2.6.32-17
>> Severity: important
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> in the linux-image packages there is now a dependency chain from
>> linux-image-2.6... -> linux-base -> libapt-pkg-perl ->
>> libapt-pkg-libc6.9-6-4.8. Which is the virtual package provided by apt
>> to signal the ABI of its library and binary caches. In effect the
>> kernels are locked to a specific ABI version of apt. The problem is
>> that the ABI changes from time to time and every time it does an
>> update of apt will now remove the kernel for the duration of the
>> transition. For an example try installing apt from experimental.
>> 
>> Well, that is life you might say. That is what is called a library
>> transition.
>> 
>> But here comes the insane part. The 1637 line long perl postinst
>> script of linux-base only depends on apt because of this code at the
>> end:
> [...]
>
> What's really insane is that we don't have a nice and stable library to
> do this and instead I have to fork every time I want to compare two
> strings.
>
> Ben.

Yes, a nice and stable libdpkg is needed. But here it is ONE fork and
the script aready forks a zillion times for other tools. So no harm done.

MfG
        Goswin