Bug#403641: Is this RC: "postrm remove" assumes Depended-on packages are configured and fails (was: Bug#403641: tetex-base: postrm fails if just unpackaged.)

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Dear Release Managers,

do you consider the following scenario release-critical?  If yes, we
have more than one RC bug:

- $packagemanager install B X
- package A is unpacked
- package B which Depends: A is unpacked
- package X which is unrelated is tried to unpack, but fails (e.g. a
  file conflict
- $packagmanager starts removing all new packages

- the postrm of B is called with "remove" and fails since it assumes
  that A is configured and uses commands which fail

This happened with tetex-base on a build, but the problem exists in all
packages that use dh_installtex with any other options than common
debhelper ones.

The Policy document is a bit misleading in this respect, I have filed a
bug about it (no number yet), since it doesn't mention any difference
between "relying on being present" and "relying on being configured".
Therefore I suspect that many more packages suffer from this problem.
And actually each command used in any "postrm remove" can become
dependent on "configuredness" by later uploads of the depended-on
package, so this is a general problem for all types of packages.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)