Re: dpkg -i first.dep second.dep: installs but does not configure one?

[Steffen Dettmer <steffen.dettmer@gmail.com>]

Hi,

thanks for your fast replies and nice answers!

It turned out that it is a bit more complicated, so it took me
some time to ask around here, sorry for the delay, I hope you
still remember the context:

On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 7:35 PM, Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de> wrote:
> > Le 03.04.2014 11:46, Steffen Dettmer a écrit :
> > > $ dpkg -i first.dep second.dep
> > >
> > > pre-dependency problem:
> > >  nd-second pre-depends on nd-first
> > >   nd-first is unpacked, but has never been configured.
>
> dpkg is smart enough to figure out the order in which
> packages need to be configured.

Isn't it a bug then, that if dpkg is even smart enough to figure
out the configuration order, but is not smart enough to figure
out the order in which packages need to be unpacked?

> Rather the problem is that both packages are _unpacked_ before
> the first one is configured, and this is where the
> pre-dependency is not fulfilled.
>
> > Other that that, why are you using pre-depends and not depends? That
> > would fix the problem.
>
> Indeed.

I still unsure if I found the right answer, but I think the
reason for Pre-Depends is, that one package "debian/preinst"
script depends on another package being installed. The preinst
script creates a partion and a file system which might be
needed to install/unpack further packages on; for the creation, it
needs configured contents from the package it pre-depends on.

The idea was to have a package that provides this file system and
other packages that need it can depend on it. These further
packages should be able to unpack directly on this filesystem.

In in short, before unpacking further.deb, filesystem.deb has not
only to be unpackaged but full installed (configured).

What would be the right way to do this?

Is this a bug in dpkg?

Regards,
Steffen