[xml/sgml-pkgs] Bug#262395: acknowledged by developer (Re: *** ERROR: can't make xmltex fmt files, installation doesn't work)

[Frank Küster]

Sebastien Bacher <seb128@debian.org> wrote:

> reopen 262395
> severity 262395 important
> thanks
>
> Le mercredi 04 août 2004 à 11:03 -0700, Debian Bug Tracking System a
> écrit :
>
>> Yes, it should fail. The postinst of tetex-bin even warns you about
>> this.
>> 
>>  Note that this is a known issue with the Debian teTeX packages; the
>>  configuration dialogs displayed at package installation time say:
>
> I strongly disagree, a package installation should never fail on
> purpose. Catch the error, ignore it, at least display a message to say
> what's needed but don't keep a broken postinst on purpose. 

Please note that the tetex-bin package has changed its defaults
meanwhile. It is still possible to deselect automatic generation of
fmtutil.cnf, but the new default is now to generate it. Furthermore,
people upgrading from old installations have been prompted again with
the new behavior selected as default, and noninteractive installations
(or machines with too low debconf priority) have been automatically
changed to generate fmtutil.cnf.

I think this lowers the severity of the bug, because now it should only
affect people who deliberately chose to override the default, reading
the warning:

,----
|  However, installation of some TeX-related packages will fail unless
|  you accept this option.
`----

Regards, Frank

-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer