>> Package: dictionaries-common
>> Version: 1.5.17
>> Severity: important
> Hi, Stefan, nice to read you here,
Hello, Agustin, I didn't expect to see you here either, but it's
equally pleasant.
>> Installation of dictionaries-common failed as follows:
>> Setting up dictionaries-common (1.5.17) ...
>> install/dictionaries-common: Byte-compiling for emacsen flavour emacs20
> emacs20??
>> Warning: Lisp directory `/usr/local/share/emacs/20.7/site-lisp' does not
>> exist.
>> Wrote /usr/share/emacs20/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/debian-ispell.elc
>> Wrote /usr/share/emacs20/site-lisp/dictionaries-common/ispell.elc
>> While compiling toplevel forms in file /usr/share/emacs20/site-lisp
>> /dictionaries-common/flyspell.el:
>> !! Symbol's function definition is void ((executable-find))
>> Done
>> emacs-package-install: /usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/dictionaries-
>> common emacs20 emacs19 emacs20 emacs21 emacs22 emacs23 xemacs21 failed at
> emacs19??
Yes, those beasts exist and they still work (and no, I didn't build any
special emacs20 or emacs19 package, these are the very packages Debian
distributed).
> IIRC, the reason behind that miss was that at some time emacs20
> package was not installable at all along with the rest of Debian and
> package manager program decided to remove it because of some
> incompatibility, so I forgot to add the extra harmless exclusion.
> Seems that incompatibiity finally disappeared or you managed to work
> around it (or I remember wrong, cannot find relevant info).
I installed emacs19 and emacs20 about the same time (i.e. a while ago
but not that long ago: emacs22 already existed for sure). IIRC emacs20
installed without trouble, whereas for emacs19, I had to provide
a hand-made meta-package xlib6g because the X11 lib packages have been
re-organized:
% aptitude show xlib6g
Impossible de trouver l'archive « testing » pour le paquet « xlib6g »
Paquet : xlib6g
Nouveau: oui
État: installé
Automatiquement installé: oui
Version : 7.3.0-2
Priorité : N/A
Section : N/A
Responsable : Stefan Monnier
Taille décompressée : 0
Dépend: libice6, libsm6, libx11-6, libxext6, libxi6, libxmu6, libxp6,
libxt6, libxtst6, libxaw6
Description : Dependency mapper xlib6g => various new smaller packages
> A wider list of exclusions will be uploaded once squeeze is released,
> including emacs19 emacs20 emacs21 and emacs22, so only emacs23 and xemacs21
> are enabled and the other, if present, use pristine code.
Good, thanks.
>> Failure to byte-compile those non-essential Elisp files should clearly not
>> prevent installation of the package.
> This part belongs to the emacsen-common package, which contains Debian
> policy for emacsen and auxiliary tools. I personally think is correct
> to catch the error and fail, that increases probability of bug
> reporting and fixing.
Given the major annoyance it can be for the end-user when an
installation script fails (which can in turn prevent other packages from
installing), I strongly disagree. There has to be a way to record the
error and encourage the user to report it, while at the same time
letting the installation proceed.
A `dpkg --ignore-script-failure' option might be such a solution.
I've bumped into this very problem (too) many times, and not only
because of my unusually ancient emacsNN packages, the same can (and
does) happen with newer Emacsen combined with older Elisp packages.
Stefan
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