On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 20:51 +0300, Riku Voipio wrote: > On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 11:12:39AM -0600, Bdale Garbee wrote: > > One is the use of makedev in package postinst scripts. I don't know > > offhand what the set of packages are that have an implicit dependency on > > makedev, those would all need to be updated to make the dependency > > explicit before we take makedev out of the set of packages assumed to be > > present on a system. > > postinst scripts on my system use something like
I did a search in the lintian lab on gluck today, and found that 103 current packages have one or more makedev calls in preinst/postinst. I haven't tried to analyze how many of those might fail if the makedev package were not present. > [ -x /dev/MAKEDEV ] && /dev/MAKEDEV foo > > some use "-e", bad maintainers... There might some packages that fail to > check. > > Btw, this was inspired by the fact that /dev/MAKEDEV symlink is gone > without fanfare in ubuntu jaunty. The still ship the package thou.. We > could fix it properly by leaving the package :) I've been telling people for something like a decade that they should call /sbin/MAKEDEV explicitly and not depend on the symlink in /dev, so I have little sympathy for any package affected by this change... however, I note that on my system, it's about an even split between packages that call /sbin/MAKEDEV and packages that depend on the /dev symlink. Sigh. > > Another is the use of makedev in debootstrap and friends. It at least > > used to be a necessary part of the build environment for those tools if > > not the runtime. Adding explicit dependencies or build dependencies to > > such packages would be required if makedev is no longer assumed to be > > present on a system. > > debootstrap: build-depends on debootstrap and builds a devices.tar.gz > during buildtime. I presume you meant build-depends on makedev, which sounds like what I remember. > cdebootstrap: doesn't use makedev at all, does some mknod's itself in a > helper package on runtime. Interesting. Good to know. > It is, ofcourse possible that devices.tar.gz / cdebootstrap-helper-makedev.deb > forget to create some devices that makedev will create anyway in > postinst (which will get installed automatically due to required > priority). Right. However, if we were to make the makedev package optional with all that implies, I suspect fixing up any serious consequences of this would be fairly easy. So I think we have enough information for me to write up a proposal to transition the makedev package to priority optional. I'm not inclined to do away with it entirely since I think there may be some residual value in having it around for a while longer. But forcing packages to be able to live without it sounds like a completely reasonable thing to pursue... Bdale -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
