Re: [RFC] Skipping new-prerm failed-upgrade?

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Raphael,

Raphael Hertzog wrote:

> 1/ I'd argue that in the case of downgrade, dpkg should not try to run
>    the failed-upgrade fallback because there's no way the oldest version
>    can be aware of how to work-around a problem in a prerm script of a
>    newer version that did not exist at the time the oldest prerm was
>    written.
>
>    Suggested patch attached. Do you agree with this? Do you see possible
>    problems with this?

The patch doesn't seem to be attached, but that makes perfect sense to
me.  If the new prerm is failing for no good reason, a person can upgrade
to a version with the bug fixed and then downgrade.

> 2/ It would be nice to have a way for the prerm script to explicitly
>    disable the fallback. Maybe we could define a special exit code that
>    the "prerm upgrade" can use to tell dpkg to not consider the fallback.

That would defeat the point of having a fallback (namely avoiding bugs
putting systems into a state with no automatic way in the packaging
system to get out of it), so I think it's an awful idea. ;-)  If you
can't trust the maintainers of future versions of your package, who
can you trust?

Thanks for working on this.
Jonathan