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Re: dpkg unpack vs. configure

On Sun, 29 Dec 1996, Bruce Perens wrote:

bruce >> Circular dependencies are rather strange.
bruce >> Can we have a concrete example of one?
bruce >
bruce >	ld.so uses bash, perl, and fileutils to confgure itself,
bruce >	although the pre-dependencies are _not_ in the control file.
bruce >
bruce >	libc5 pre-depends on ldso, and uses bash, dpkg, and fileutils to configure
bruce >	itself, although the pre-dependencies for those are again not in the control
bruce >	file.
bruce >
bruce >	Bash, perl, fileutils, and dpkg need ldso and libc5 to run.

But these are dependencies for installation only on a functioning base
package. There are no real circular dependencies meaning

1. Package A needs package B to work

2. Package B needs package A to work.

If that would be the case then both packages need to be made one right?

One solution to this issue is to have an initial base package containing a
minimal set of essentials a program needs to install. That base package is
later reduced via packages that use "Replaces: base".

The functionality of the base package can be guaranteed by requiring all
base modules to be immediately configured after unpacking without any
interactive questions.

Would we still need predependencies in that scenario?

bruce >> Perhaps packages could set a marker to tell that they are not
bruce >> interactively configuring and those could be done immediately?
bruce >
bruce >We have a better solution for this - configure at selection time.

How do you envision that would work?

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