[Piuparts-devel] EDOS file overwrite check between distributions?

[Ralf Treinen]

Hi Andreas,

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 01:11:49PM +0100, Andreas Beckmann wrote:

> if I understood correctly, the EDOS file overwrite test only tests
> inside a distribution and you usually catch the errors listed in
> http://piuparts.debian.org/sid/overwrite_other_packages_files_error.html
> before piuparts gets to test the packages :-)

at the moment, yes.

> But there are also a lot of similar errors that show up only during
> upgrade tests from squeeze to wheezy (or wheezy to sid or squeeze to
> sid) like
> http://piuparts.debian.org/squeeze2wheezy/overwrite_other_packages_files_error.html
> 
> Is it possible to do your EDOS check also between distributions to catch
> all possible upgrade issues that involve file overwrites? piuparts only
> detects the problems if the packages are linked by some depndency
> (usually a file was moved intentionally and the old location Depends on
> the new one, but a proper versioned Breaks/Replaces was forgotten). I
> think there are some cases where piuparts may not find this problem,
> e.g. if a transitional package is missing.

A priori yes, and in fact this has already been suggested earlier. The main
problem was, if I remember right, that it was not completely clear to me
what sequence of install and update requests exactely should be tested.
You are right that this should be done, thanks for reminding me of that.
I hope to have some time to work on this after FOSDEM.

> Another question, when doing installation tests, do you also check that
> co-installable packages behave sanely and the second one that gets
> installed does not break the first one in a way that leaves the first
> installed in an unusable state after the second is removed? (i.e.
> forgotten diversion, disappeared files, ...)
> 
> e.g. two packages A, B shipping the same file F and are co-installable,
> so the system state after
> 
>   bootstrap chroot
>   install A
>   install B
>   purge B
> 
> should be equivalent to
> 
>   bootstrap chroot
>   install B
>   install A
>   purge B
> 
> and should be equivalent to
> 
>   bootstrap chroot
>   install A
> 
> (i.e. whatever B does to install F, it must be undone properly when B is
> removed+purged)
> (A may be allowed to disappear in the first sequence)

Interesting idea. At the moment this is not done, but this would be 
useful. 

I think that in the long run we should think about integrating our
efforts, that is build a combined tool that uses edos-distrcheck to
filter out the interesting test cases, and then piuparts to do the
actual installation tests.

Are you coming to FOSDEM? That would probably be the easiest way to
discuss. I will arrive on Satuday morning, and then will be mostly 
in the CrossDistribution devroom until Sunday evening.

Cheers -Ralf.
-- 
Ralf Treinen
Laboratoire Preuves, Programmes et Systèmes
Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France.
http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~treinen/