On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 19:33, Colin Watson wrote: > The pre-depended-on > package doesn't have to be configured; it merely has to have been > configured at some point in the past. Thus, pre-depended-on packages > have to be prepared to be functional in the most common case of being > unpacked but not configured (if we assume that packages are upgraded > more often than they're installed, which seems rather likely to me). > This is a requirement imposed by policy on pre-depended-on packages.
Policy doesn't say that it is a bug for a pre-depended-on package to fail to function before being configured. It could just as easily be interpreted as saying that it is a bug for package preinst and unpack to rely on packages that fail to function before they are configured. > AJ's requirement is fractionally stricter than policy's, but packages on > which other packages pre-depend should be playing it safe anyway. I > think that very much the same kind of care is needed to satisfy AJ's > requirement and to satisfy policy. Perhaps. But there _is_ a difference between the two and it turns out to be important in the case I am investigating. I will follow policy instead of the summary. -- Thomas
