Re: awk: essential virtual package?

[James Troup <J.J.Troup@scm.brad.ac.uk>]

Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es> writes:

> However, James Troup seems to think that there are two types of
> essential packages, "essential" ones and "really essential" ones. I
> would like to hear his opinion on this.

I brought up the idea of "extremely essential" packages for the simple
reason that you were using the gzip Pre-Depends debate as an excuse
for your bug reporting, claiming that the situation had already been
discussed.  My point was that this was/is not the case; let's look at
gzip and procps.

(Sorry to keep repeating this example, but it's kind of central to
what I'm saying).  If a libc6 gzip without Pre-Depends is unpacked
onto a libc5 system (very possible since dpkg doesn't do ordering for
installation), dpkg will eventually die after trying to spawn gzip a
number of times.  This is bad; a system without a usable dpkg or gzip
is very very hosed.  (Thus I would say gzip is extremely essential)

If procps is installed and is in an unconfigured state or even an
usable state temporarily (e.g. it's libc6 and libc5 hasn't been
unpacked yet), dpkg is not going to die, and in fact I suspect the
vast majority of {{post,pre}{inst,rm}} scripts won't.  Even if they
do, and even in the _exceedingly_ unlikely situation that so many do
die dpkg actually says "bugger it" and gives up, the situation is not
nice, but recoverable (simply install libc6 or configure procps).
Thus even though procps is essential (IMHO it shouldn't be), if it's
unconfigured or even unusable, it's not going to make the system
FUBAR.
 
That's the distinction I was trying to draw, and the reason was simply
to show that discussing Pre-Depends WRT to gzip is not equivalent to
discussing Pre-Depends for all Essential: yes packages.

[ ... ]

> Perhaps we should just make mawk and gawk to Pre-Depend on libc6
> instead?

With all due respect, you've 100% missed the point of making awk an
essential package, the idea is to ensure that there is always an awk
available for {{pre,post}{inst,rm} scripts etc. without the need for a
dependency.  If we go out of our way for perl in the same regard, to
not to do it also for good old awk would be criminal.

-- 
James