Bug#530832: Bug#531581: Critical problems on hppa and ia64 buildds

[Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org>]

On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 11:36:25PM +0200, Norbert Preining wrote:
> On So, 07 Jun 2009, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> > Le vendredi 05 juin 2009 à 21:15 +0200, Frank Küster a écrit :
> > > texlive-base's postrm, upon REMOVE, uses a command from tex-common, on
> > > which it already DEPENDS. This is allowed by policy.

> > I’m not sure about the policy, but I’m certain that with the current
> > dpkg version this will fail miserably in many cases. The only packages

> Many cases? I disagree. Only in the case that someone removes a package
> with --force, right? All other variants should be handled (hopefully!).

Er, no, as has already been addressed in this thread, there are cases in
which dpkg will legitimately leave a package in a state where its "postrm
remove" is called after its dependencies have been removed, without any use
of --force options.

One is the case of a package being unpacked, then removed, without ever
being configured.

Another is the case of a package being deconfigured automatically by dpkg
(dpkg --auto-deconfigure, aka dpkg -B, which is standard in upgrades), then
having its dependencies removed from the system, then having the package
removed.  The higher-level package managers try to minimize the chance of
this occuring, but it's still a legitimate case (from dpkg's POV) where the
package's deps will not be satisfied when 'postrm remove' is called.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org