Hi,
On Jan 21, 2005, at 4:01 AM, Daniel Macks wrote:
On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 05:57:23AM -0500, Dave Vasilevsky wrote:On Jan 20, 2005, at 8:02 PM, Daniel Macks wrote:If a user is not carfull the system might end up unusable due to e.g. a missing apt while running with UseBinaryDist.
That's not an "unusable" state, since fink will merely issue a "please
install the apt pkg" warning. But anyway...
I think what was meant was using the binary distribution (ie:
exclusively apt-get, no use of fink-the-program at all). Quite a number
of users don't even have the DevTools installed, but just apt-get
packages via the CLI or FinkCommander. If they lose apt, they're pretty
screwed. You or I might know we could go to the Fink bindist on the
web, download the .deb for apt, and re-install it via dpkg; but the
average user wouldn't.
apt-get seems to be smart enough to know it is part of the "apt" package, and therefore treat it as "essential" in the formal (dpkg) sense. The problem is using dpkg/fink/FinkCommander to remove it. When one first installs fink, does it install the "apt" pkg? That would mean one has apt.deb. A purely binary user (i.e., no XCode) would have SelfUpdateMethod:point and Trees:stable/*, meaning the original apt.deb would still be the "correct" version (matching %v-%r in the PDB, so no compile needed to reinstall it by whatever tool he used to remove it).
Would it help if fink should treated "apt" as (dpkg)Essential when running with UseBindist?
Perhaps this is an argument for making apt essential? If a significant portion of the user base is stuck should apt ever be removed, it seems to be pretty "essential" in the English sense of the word. Is there a technical reason that it isn't essential?
From a maintenance point of view, the fewer packages that are (dpkg)Essential set the better. It really isn't (English)essential for build-from-source purists...I'd used fink for several years and never touched it until I started looking at the UseBindist implementation.
But if it really is (English)essential for a large number of users and making it (dpkg)Essential is the easiest way to accomplish that, then so be it (especially since Essential:yes is just a change to the apt pkg and can so easily be changed again in the future should we change our minds).
I haven't have too much time to play around, but I figured out that debfoster needs both apt and dpkg at run time, while they were missing from the depends. I committed a fixed package in 10.3/unstable. This should at least cure the problem that debfoster removes apt.
I don't know exactly how debfoster uses this keepers file, but assuming it's the "live" list of intentionally installed pkgs, gotta be very careful how to handle upgrades. The list of Essential files can change...don't want to don't want to overwrite a live datafile.
This is true. I think it's better to look at debfoster's facilities. The default debfoster.conf has 'UseEssential = yes', which should stop debfoster from removing essentials. So why are we seeing them being removed?
*That* is a very good question (and solving it may alter the course of the whole preceeding discussion:).
Right. But I was not able to reproduce the problem. Do you have a case where debfoster ignores the 'essential' flag?
Cheers,
Remi
--------------------------------------------------------------------- I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on my disk somewhere.
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