Re: supporting seemless package renames
Eugene V. Lyubimkin wrote:
> On Thursday 08 April 2010 15:52:19 Jonathan Nieder wrote:
>> Hmm, sounds like a bug in policy. I think disappeared packages ought
>> to receive prerm. Would you like to raise the issue, or should I?
>
> Disappeared packages do not receive prerm because of complicated dpkg logic
> behind it (KISS, KISS...), by the time of dpkg decides that package will
> disappear the files of the package may be deleted already. Given that I suppose
> that this behavior is intentional.
Ah, so the problem is that if prerm errors out there is no way to
cancel the removal? And if I understand correctly, you are suggesting
to run prerm before unpacking the replacing package to fix this. For
what it’s worth, what I was thinking of before was to run prerm but
resign to ignoring errors from it. Your idea is interesting; I will
think about it.
>> It would be better if the package manager could say ‘the oldpkg
>> package will renamed by this upgrade; its new name is newpkg’.
>> Unfortunately, in the current control file format, I don’t know a way
>> to express that. Maybe debtags can help (role::dummy).
>
> I would argue that package manager should not consider debtags as a source of
> critical control information.
Of course --- I only meant for the sake of displaying what is about
to happen, not controlling the package manager’s behavior. Still, the
suggestion was ugly, and I am happy to discard it.
I have to go now, but I can return to this topic tonight. Thanks for
the food for thought.
Ciao,
Jonathan
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