Bug#681834: network-manager, gnome, Recommends vs Depends

[Steve Langasek]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 01:48:01AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Michael Biebl writes ("Bug#681834: network-manager, gnome, Recommends vs Depends"):
> > We thus tried a compromise, where the network-manager postinst script
> > automatically comments out dhcp-type connections in /e/n/i (and restores
> > them, in case the package is removed again,fwiw).

> So just to be clear: consider the case where a user has deliberately
> violated the Recommends in squeeze from gnome to network-manager, and
> now upgrades to wheezy.  They will get network-manager back via the
> hard dependency from gnome-core.  Presumably they don't want to
> deinstall `gnome', so they don't have a choice about that.

> If their networking is using a dhcp entry in /etc/network/interfaces,
> the result of installing n-m will be that this entry will be commented
> out.  So the networking will break.

I don't see how this follows.  If n-m has been newly installed and is in
proper working order, and it sees that there's a trivially-configured
network interface in /e/n/i that it can take over, and it does so, how does
networking break?

And if it breaks, shouldn't we consider that a release critical bug in NM in
its own right, to be fixed for wheezy, regardless of whether NM is being
pulled in by default on upgrade?

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org