On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 09:27:10AM +0000, Jörg Sommer wrote: > recently, I've installed a new system with a minimal configuration. Then > I've imported my old package selection with dpkg --set-selections and run > apt-get dselect-upgrade. This replaced the mawk package by the gawk > package and installed some X package at the same time.
<snip> > But x11-common and many other X packages use awk in their maintainer > scripts. <snip> > So, must these packages pre‐depend on awk? No, but I think we may have a bug in base-files here that no one's ever noticed before. base-files has a dependency on the virtual package 'awk', specifically so that awk can be treated as "virtually essential" and packages can use it without (pre-)depending on it. But dependencies of essential packages are *not* part of the essential closure; only essential packages, their pre-dependencies, and the (transitive) dependencies of their pre-dependencies have this property. Since awk is only a dependency of base-files rather than a pre-dependency, it is by definition not required for the essential functionality of base-files (== "works when unpacked but not yet configured"), so dpkg/apt are allowed to remove awk from the system completely in the middle of an upgrade! So I think we have a bug here in base-files, which needs to Pre-Depend on awk in order to actually get the semantics that were intended. BTW, the packages backupninja, dlocate, gt5, linuxdoc-tools, and lsb-core appear to have spurious dependencies on either 'awk' or 'mawk | gawk'. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
