[Please don't mail -qa with ill-formed rants. They are not appropriate there. They are also not appropriate in the bug tracking system, so I've removed the off-topic #287949 from the cc list.]
On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 04:58:56PM -0500, William Ballard wrote: > Given that -source packages do not adequately specify the dependencies > to be able to use the output, one must NEVER run "dpkg -i" a given deb > without first running "dpkg --dry-run -i" on the same debs and verifying > that it returns a zero exit code. Are you aware that dpkg --dry-run -i unpacks the new package before checking that the package can be configured (i.e. it's equivalent to dpkg --dry-run --unpack; dpkg --dry-run --configure), so your "solution" is at best a no-op? See bug #183470. In fact, your approach is worse because --no-act doesn't even report dependency problems encountered in the configure step, nor exit non-zero when it encounters them. See bug #55364. It's much more efficient for users to keep the old .debs around and simply use dpkg -i, which will exit non-zero on errors and allow you to put the old .deb back. Seems clear that you didn't try this before recommending it ... Cheers, -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
