Re: Draft spec for new dpkg "triggers" feature (v2, repost)

[Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr>]

Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

>> think that in non-trivial upgrades, there are often several dpkg runs
>> (e.g., unpacking, configuring, unpacking again, configuring again), and

[...]

> FWIW I think this repeated execution of separate dpkg runs is not
> ideal and might be considered a bug in apt.

Erm, looking at dpkg(1) and the output of 'dpkg --help', I don't have
the impression that something like that is allowed:

  dpkg --unpack foo.deb bar.deb --configure foo bar \
       --remove bla --unpack baz.deb --configure baz \
       --install bla.deb

Therefore, it seems to me that it would be difficult for apt to do its
job without resorting to running dpkg several times in a row.

> But anyway this problem can be avoided if apt is later changed to use
> --suppress-triggers on all the non-final runs and to run dpkg
> --configure --pending at the end (rather than trying to provide a list
> of packages).

Agreed, but if you think it should work this way, you should review the
third paragraph in section "apt and aptitude" of your spec, as I
mentioned earlier.

-- 
Florent