Re: Bug#50832: AMENDMENT] Clarify meaning of Essential: yes
Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ualberta.ca> writes:
> On Sun, Dec 12, 1999 at 12:32:08AM -0800, Chris Waters wrote:
> > The downside is, of course, that dpkg isn't very good at ordering
> > things, but again, that's a flaw in dpkg, and I think we'd be better
> > off trying to address that, not just for essential packages, but for
> > the benefit of the whole system.
> Sigh. Why does everyone think this is a flaw in dpkg? Is 'rm -rf /' a flaw
> in rm?
Not a valid analogy. The issue here is that essential packages are,
in essence, *PRE*-dependencies of the entire system, not just
dependencies. And dpkg has *never* handled pre-dependencies very
gracefully. (I still recall, on my first install of debian, having to
run the install process several times, because dpkg was confused by
all the pre-dependencies in the base system.)
This is more like if rm choked on symlinks.
> dpkg is the very lowest interface to the packaging system, it
> performs all the *mandatory* checks necessary to do any operation.
Yes, well, perhaps modifying dpkg isn't the only way to address the
problem; I'll grant that. Modifying *all* the existing tools that use
dpkg is another perfectly viable, and possibly preferable approach.
Except, of course, for the fact that there are a lot of such tools,
and there may well be inhouse tools we're not aware of.
I don't know; seems like everybody but me is enamoured of complex,
baroque solutions that involve jumping through hoops while juggling
chainsaws. I think that fixing dpkg would be a simple and final
solution to the problem. Yes, it requires more work up front, but I
think it would save a lot of work and broken systems in the long run.
It's called "doing it right".
I'm a lot more sympathetic to this objection than I am to AT's,
though. Fixing all the dselect methods would certainly be a Good
Thing. :-)
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