Sven Joachim wrote: > On 2009-08-17 22:07 +0200, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > >> The xz-utils package in experimental Conflicts/Replaces/Provides the >> pseudo-essential package lzma. I think this should be fine, since >> installing it only involves overwriting the lzma package rather than >> removing it. Indeed, with dpkg or aptitude it installs fine, and >> /var/log/dpkg.log does not mention removing lzma. On the other hand, >> apt-get decides it needs to remove lzma, resulting in the message >> >> | WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed. >> | This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing! >> | lzma (due to dpkg) >> >> See bug #542060 [1] for the full output. APT bug #169241 [2] also looks related. >> >> Am I misunderstanding policy here? Is apt-get’s behavior useful? > > I think it is correct. Since dpkg Pre-Depends on lzma, removing lzma in > favor of xz-utils could theoretically hose your system (imagine that all > Debian packages or even just lzma and xz-utils were lzma-compressed; you > would not be able to unpack them). I concur. xz-utils defines 'Provides: lzma', so the pre-dependency is fully satisfied. -- Eugene V. Lyubimkin aka JackYF, JID: jackyf.devel(maildog)gmail.com C++/Perl developer, Debian Maintainer
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