Re: chain effect of package installation failures

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

> I just posted, perhaps to the wrong address.

Don't worry. This is a lot closer-to-topic than most of today's postings :-) .

> gcc's installation failed because of a rather inane combination of
> circumstances---the postinst script exitted with an error because of
> the failure of install-info to find the file /usr/info/cpp.info.gz .
> This happened because after gcc failed to install all the way because
> of a dependency.

I'd suggest you install the package that gcc depends on, re-install gcc,
and then remove the texinfo file only after the installation has completed.

> All the same, debian is great.  But I am certain this is not the last
> you will hear of these little inconsistencies.

The whole point of the package system is to protect the user. Sometimes, that
gets in the way. With the recent introduction of complaints about file
over-writing and the pre-depends mechanism, it is _really_ getting in the
way. This should subside as the packages are fixed to not contain duplicate
files.

	Thanks

	Bruce Perens
--
Pixar Animation Studios: Reality is not our business.
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