Re: System breakage because of "unpurged package"

[Bill Allombert <Bill.Allombert@math.u-bordeaux1.fr>]

On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 08:44:17PM +0100, Tobias Frost wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Because of #459424, I am curious how/if this should be/is handled by
> dependencies:
> 
> A package broke the system. A "Suggestion" of this packages conflictes
> with an older version of this suggestion. However, the older version had
> been removed previously, so the conflict is technically resolved. 
> But as it was not purged, the config-files were still there. And the
> presence of this config-files caused the breakage.

To make the issue independant of the particular of #459424, let says
'Package foo' breaks when 'Package bar' is installed but not purged.

This is a bug in 'Package foo' on two counts:
1) package foo must not act upon other package conffiles (policy 
   10.7.4. Sharing configuration files).

2) package should not act on config files from removed packages
(See e.g. Policy 9.3.2

     These scripts should not fail obscurely when the configuration files
     remain but the package has been removed, as configuration files remain
     on the system after the package has been removed.  )

However as far as I see, the actual issue in #459424 is very different:
package bar is buggy whether it is in installed state or removed state.
Package foo is not required to work around bar breakage as long as bar
is not part of a stable release.  If foo insists to do it, then I think
the best option is to do it in the preinst script.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.