Re: essential packages and Pre-Depends

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

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We should remember that dpkg *does* allow a package to be installed
when the *Dependencies* are not satisfied.

Example. In a pure bo system, the following may happen:

# dpkg -i diff_2.7-15.deb

[ This is the diff from hamm ]

(Reading database ... 15191 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace diff 2.7-13 (using diff_2.7-15.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement diff ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of diff:
 diff depends on libc6; however:
  Package libc6 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing diff (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 diff

Of course, diff is now unpacked, but it does not work at all.

We have told our users that our packaging system is "robust".
But the packaging system in this case allowed an essential package to 
become completely broken.

I don't want to discuss here whether diff should or
should not be essential [ Currently it is ].

I'm saying that there must be something really wrong if we consider
that a given package is "essential" and at the same time we allow this
to happen without using any --force-whatever option of dpkg.

Thanks.

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