The debian-private mailing list leak, part 1. Volunteers have complained about Blackmail. Lynchings. Character assassination. Defamation. Cyberbullying. Volunteers who gave many years of their lives are picked out at random for cruel social experiments. The former DPL's girlfriend Molly de Blanc is given volunteers to experiment on for her crazy talks. These volunteers never consented to be used like lab rats. We don't either. debian-private can no longer be a safe space for the cabal. Let these monsters have nowhere to hide. Volunteers are not disposable. We stand with the victims.
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: pre/post install scripts and pre-depends

On Sun, 29 Dec 1996, Bruce Perens wrote:

> Ian Jackson has the final say on dpkg-related policies. I dislike perl
> but it's diffficult to make a complex installation script in bash, and
> you end up relying on a larger tool-set than perl - sed, cut, paste,
> etc. I'd prefer that {pre,post}{install,rm} scripts be written for bash
> if at all possible.

I understand the point here, having had to move to perl for the UpGrade
script that I wrote (and DoList as well) because the shell script could
not do what I needed.
As Shaya pointed out, there are other scripts, not strictly constrained to
installation scripts like install-mime that get called by pre/postinst
scripts that can be totally unrelated to the perlness of the installing
package.
I also had problems with DoList when used to install/upgrade packages on a
base system. The perl that comes in base was to anorexic for my script to
execute. Installing the full perl package resolves the issue, however, I
am taking the tact of re-writing it in C so it doesn't depend on anything.
I would argue that this tact should be taken with things like install-mime
as well.

> 
> I think it makes sense for _all_ packages to have a pre-dependency on
> the package that provides the interpreter for their
> {pre/post}{install/rm}.
> 
The last time I discussed this with Ian, he indicated that it was
inappropriate for non-essential packages to use pre-depends.
>From what I understand of the situation this is not technically true, but
comes from a position of "that's what it was designed for, so that's the
only thing it will work for". I could be wrong in this case, but I don't,
in general, agree that design limits function in this fashion.

Luck,

Dwarf

------------                                          --------------

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 877-0257
      Flexible Software              Fax:     NONE 
      Black Creek Critters           e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net

------------ If you don't see what you want, just ask --------------


--
Please respect the confidentiality of material on the debian-private list.
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-private-REQUEST@lists.debian.org . Trouble? e-mail to Bruce@Pixar.com