Order of package removal

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Hello,

Is it possible to combine removing one package with purging an other one
in the same apt (aptitude, whatever) run, by any means?

I am asking this because of the following problem: Some conffiles of
packages depending on tetex-base (font packages) cause trouble if the
data files, the fonts, are not installed. Therefore the conffile
(possibly changed by the maintainer, or even deleted) must be saved away
outside /etc/texmf when the package is removed, and be restored when it
is installed again.

I am trying to provide a common directory for all such packages in the
tetex-base package. This directory, /var/lib/tetex, would be generated
in tetex-base's postinst script, with a README file in it, and removed
upon tetex-base's purge *if* it doesn't contain saved conffiles of other
packages.

If it was possible to combine removal of such a font package with
purging of tetex-base, it would be important to know whether the calls
to "postrm remove" of all packages are guaranteed to be finished before
"postrm purge" is called for the first package (because then I would be
in trouble, and would have to move the "saving away" to the prerm
scripts of the font packages). If such a combination is impossible,
however, I need not bother.

TIA, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer