Re: Heads-up: postinstall scripts and PATH (Attn all package maintainers)

[Harold L Hunt II <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

Robert Collins wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-02-25 at 07:39, Harold L Hunt II wrote:
>
> > I'm updating the xfig setup.hint files right now.  I am also fixing the 
> > longstanding issue of depending upon ghostscript instead of 
> > 'ghostscript-x11 ghostscript-base'.  This has caused numerous compliants 
> > about being unable to export figures correctly from xfig.
>
>
> if ghostscript-x11 depends on ghostscript-base, and you don't explicity
> call stuff in ghostscript-base, then you should not list
> ghostscript-base.

I recall being told long ago that I should do just the opposite of what 
you are suggesting.

I suggest that it does make sense to put in an explicit dependency on 
some such packages, though perhaps not all such packages, because if a 
user already has ghostscript-x11 and ghostscript-base installed, then 
manually uninstalls ghostscript-base, then selects xfig, I believe that 
ghostscript-base will not be reselected.  Rather than field bug reports, 
I would prefer to just prevent that from happening.  On the other hand, 
if setup.exe always does a full recalculation of dependecy trees when 
selecting a new package, then this will never be a problem and I can 
indeed remove ghostscript-base from the dependency list.  Of course, I 
am lazy, so I have not tested this case recently.

Harold