emacs 19.29-2 purge failed due to assumption
What follows is a problem with the emacs 19.29-2 package, but might
be relevant to all package maintainers and users so I write it here in
public:
I recently tried to install emacs 19.29-2. But it failed due to the
fact that I don't have the xlibraries installed yet. That's something
I will do in the near future, so please don't argue about that.
In order to preserve some space I did a dpkg --purge emacs to get rid
of it. But it gave me these errors:
+------
| tommie root 10:46 /usr/local/archive/debian # dpkg --purge emacs
| (Reading database ... 10251 files and directories currently installed.)
| Removing emacs ...
| dpkg - warning: while removing emacs, directory `/usr/local/lib' not empty so not removed.
| dpkg: error processing emacs (--purge):
| cannot remove `/usr/local': Operation not permitted
| Errors were encountered while processing:
| emacs
| tommie root 10:46 /usr/local/archive/debian #
+------
There is rule in the remove script that assumes emacs is the only
inhabitant of the /usr/local tree. Now I had a look if emacs was
really gone:
+------
| tommie root 10:55 /usr/local/archive/debian # dpkg -l emacs
| Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
| | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
| |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required
| ||/ Name Version Rev Description
| +++-============-=========-====-============================================
| phh emacs 19.29 2 The GNU Emacs editor.
| tommie root 10:55 /usr/local/archive/debian #
+------
Ian M., Please remove this assumption from the remove script so it can
remove itself from the system *and* the package database.
Also a word of thank. This purge-action did not try to wipe my entire
250Mb /usr/local partition. That's a good point to note. I still have
trust in the debian package system.
With regards, Guido.
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