On Sat, Jun 22, 2002 at 07:08:00PM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote: > Hello, > Is there some canonical fast way to check in a script whether inn, > inn2 or cnews is installed on the system? > I need to know it in newsx's wrapper skript to set the correct > options. Until now I've used > if [ -e /usr/share/doc/inn/copyright ] ... > which works well, but breaks policy 13.3. I would have liked to check > for existence of /var/lib/dpkg/info/$package.list, but this'll still > be there if the package is deinstalled but not purged. > I'd rather not check for some files in the package like > /usr/lib/news/input/newsrun vs. /usr/sbin/ctlinnd because they tend > to be moved around, and calling dpkg'd be slow. > thanks, cu andreas What do you do differently depending on which of these packages are installed? The best way to handle it is by directly testing for *exactly* those parts of the package that you use -- that is, if you invoke a different program for each of the packages, look for the exact binary. Checking for anything in /usr/share/doc is not kosher; policy requires that you not depend on anything in that directory for a package to function correctly. Checking for actual features that are going to be used is always the safest solution -- and often the most efficient. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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