Bug#508307: lintian: wrong interpreter-without-predep
On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 21:36 +0100, Salvo Tomaselli wrote:
> In a package i am using a python postinst script and lintian
> complains because python is not among the dependencies... But it is!
Actually, the reported problem is that python isn't a *pre*dependency,
as the description of the tag indicates - and to which the "predep" in
the tag name is a clue. :-)
It might seem like Lintian is being overly picky here, as in the normal
case one can safely assume that dependencies are present when the
postinst is called, but there are cases where this is not true - where
there is a dependency loop between the packages and both have postinsts,
there is no guarantee as to which order the postinsts will be executed
in. Since Lintian checks packages in isolation, it has no way of knowing
whether such a loop exists (and of course a loop could be later
introduced by another package).
The description of that tag could do with some love, however; it
currently contains an attempted reference to the old Packaging Manual,
which was merged in to Policy several years ago.
Regards,
Adam
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