Re: [TL 2009] texlive-base: Warning upon removal

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:

> On Do, 17 Sep 2009, Frank Küster wrote:
>> Removing texlive-base ...
>> Running 'mktexlsr /usr/share/texmf /var/lib/texmf /usr/share/texmf-texlive'.
>> This may take some time... done.
>> Running 'fmtutil-sys --all'.
>> This may take some time...
>> fmtutil-sys --all failed. Output has been stored in
>> /tmp/checkrun.mvB3AyiJ
>> If tex-common is not configured you can ignore this error message!
>> Otherwise, please include this file if you report a bug.
>> 
>> At this point, there's no fmtutil.cnf left on the system.
>
> Hmm, that is strange. Why shouldn't there be a fmtutil.cnf? 
> 	/etc/texmf/fmt.d/00tex.cnf
> is in tex-common, so it *should* be there!

Sorry, it is there. The complete error message in checkrun.XXX is

/usr/bin/fmtutil: 937: /usr/share/texmf/texconfig/tcfmgr: not found
fmtutil: config file `fmtutil.cnf' not found.

So the real problem is that tcfmgr is no longer there. No wonder, since
it is in the package that has just been removed and has now its
maintainer script run.

So it is definitely a problem in the maintainer script. As a solution,
we could add a special case for texlive-base, but how about other
packages?  This is the postrm code:

case "$1" in
    remove|disappear)
        for i in allformats map ; do
            if [ "$i" = allformats ] ; then
                for fmt in pdftex/etex etex pdftex/pdfetex pdfetex luatex/luatex luatex luatex/dviluatex dviluatex pdftex/pdftex pdftex metafont/mf mf tex/tex tex ; do
                    rm -f /var/lib/texmf/web2c/$fmt.*
                done
                dhit_check_run_without_errors fmtutil-sys --all
            fi

Because of dhit_check.... this gives only a warning, and the explaining
message is:

,----
| If tex-common is not configured you can ignore this error message!
| Otherwise, please include this file if you report a bug.
`----

However, there are more situations where this can fail:

- removal of texlive-base

- upon removal of texlive-binaries, dhit_check returns earlier, without
  a warning 

- If any other package is removed after one of the packages it depends
  on has been removed. It's the same thing as with that RC bug in the
  dh_installtex code that is still unfixed, only that here we only get a
  warning.

What do you think: Shouldn't we change the warning message to something
less specific? Like

,----
| This is probably not a bug. But if you encounter problems, report a bug
| and include this file in the bug report.
`----

Regards, Frank


-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Debian Developer (TeXLive)
VCD Aschaffenburg-Miltenberg, ADFC Miltenberg
B90/Grüne KV Miltenberg