[PATCH] Postinstall script ordering in setup - take 2

[Igor Pechtchanski]

On 5 Mar 2003, Robert Collins wrote:

> On Wed, 2003-03-05@08:19, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
> > On 5 Mar 2003, Robert Collins wrote:
>
> > > Using the packages as dependencies we can build the same topological
> > > tree based on the packages that will end up as installed (Because we do
> > > know which package has which postinstall script).
> >
> > Yes, but using scripts is more fine-grained.
>
> What granularity is needed that isn't present today?
> Rob

Well, one example I could think of off the top of my head is mutually
dependent packages.  Package dependences can be circular, script
dependences cannot.  Suppose we have packages A (containing A1.sh and
A2.sh) and B (containing B1.sh and B2.sh).  Currently we can specify that
A should be installed for B to work, *and* that B should be installed for
A to work.  However, we can't specify, for example, that A1.sh should run
before B2.sh, but B1.sh should run before A2.sh.  We could say that
postinstall scripts in mutually-dependent packages will run in an
indeterminate order, but we'd have to run either both B?.sh first or both
A?.sh first.  Even combining them into one package will not ensure
postinstall script ordering.  The only solution I see, aside from adding
script dependences, is a bunch of almost-empty helper packages...
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

Oh, boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a really *big* RAMdisk!
  -- /usr/games/fortune