Bug#924401: base-files fails postinst when base-passwd is unpacked
Hi Santiago,
On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 11:58:12AM +0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
> blame for such bug, is annoying me. (So, Helmut, please file a bug
> in the bootstrapping tool which does not work for you, and do not
> try to fix it here).
I refuse the view that multistrap is buggy. You cite undocumented
behaviour as a reason to mark it buggy. However, multistrap relies on
semantics presently assured by policy. Given that policy talks about
unpacked packages, applying it to bootstrap (in its present wording) is
reasonable. There is a bug somewhere between policy, base-files and
base-passwd, which is exactly how I filed it. Once this bug is fixed
(in any one of these components), additional bugs can result from that.
I think at least Guillem and Santiago were arguing that policy should
not be applied to bootstrap. While I don't like that view, I do find it
reasonable. It can be made explicit in section 3.8 quite easily:
Since dpkg will not prevent upgrading of other packages while an
``essential`` package is in an unconfigured state, all ``essential``
packages must supply all of their core functionality even when
-unconfigured. If the package cannot satisfy this requirement it must not
+unconfigured after being configured at least once.
+If the package cannot satisfy this requirement it must not
be tagged as essential, and any packages depending on this package must
instead have explicit dependency fields as appropriate.
After doing so, we'll likely need to do something about mmdebstrap and
multistrap as well as furthering our utopia about declarative
replacements for maintainer scripts.
Helmut
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