Hi Simon,
On Sun, Mar 09, 2025 at 03:34:34PM +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
On Sun, 09 Mar 2025 at 15:20:35 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
I haven't really thought about those upgrading things, but I took
from this discussion that preinst and postinst scripts are likely to
run with pre-upgrader versions of adduser. That's a real pity since
it will slow down Debian's speed to simplify maintainer scripts but
that's just the way things are.
It is not that postinst scripts are *likely* to run with the old
version of adduser, so much as that postinst scripts are required to
assume that they *might* run with the old version of adduser, unless
the package explicitly has a versioned Depends on the new version of
adduser. I think a versioned Depends would be fine for packages higher
up the dependency stack (for instance in something like
gnome-remote-desktop or openarena-server I wouldn't hesitate to add
one), but every time we tighten a dependency lower down the stack, we
give apt tighter constraints to work with, which increases the
probability that apt will be unable to find a solution (either because
no solution exists, or because its heuristics can't find a solution in
a reasonable timeframe).
That is fully reasonably argumentation.
Similary preinst scripts must assume that they might run with the old
version of adduser, unless the package has a *Pre-Depends* on the new
adduser - and Pre-Depends are definitely not something to deploy
lightly, because they put very significant constraints on what
solutions apt is allowed to propose.
Of course. Luckily, there is less than a handful of packages that use
adduser in their preinst.
If we have to defer some maintainer script simplifications until
forky, that's certainly not the worst thing: better that than not
being able to apply those simplifications at all! I'm grateful that
you have been teaching adduser to do the right thing by default, like
making --system imply --home=/nonexistent, making it never "helpfully"
create /nonexistent as a home directory, and making --system imply
enough of --quiet that maintainer scripts probably no longer need
--quiet in future. Those are all good directions.
Thank you. We're working on that ;-)
Greetings
Marc
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Haber | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header
Leimen, Germany | lose things." Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402
Nordisch by Nature | How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421
_______________________________________________
Pkg-utopia-maintainers mailing list
[email protected]
https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-utopia-maintainers
