Bug#718277: Conditional setting of gconftool alternative breaks when installing after removal

[Margarita Manterola]

Package: gconf2
Version: 3.2.5-1
Severity: normal

Hi,

gconf2 uses update-alternatives to point /usr/bin/gconftool to
/usr/bin/gconftool-2.  This is the relevant snippet:

if [ "$1" = configure ] && dpkg --compare-versions "$2" lt 2.26.2-4; then
    update-alternatives \
        --install /usr/bin/gconftool gconftool /usr/bin/gconftool-2 25 \
        --slave /usr/share/man/man1/gconftool.1.gz gconftool.1.gz \
                /usr/share/man/man1/gconftool-2.1.gz
fi

The problem with this is that if the user removes gconf2 the
alternative gets correctly deleted, and then when re-installing it,
the condition is not met (because when installing from the
config-files state the postinst script receives the old package
version as a parameter) and so the alternative is not recreated.

I'm not sure if the correct course of action is to check if the file
is there instead of checking against the very old version, or checking
if it's configuring from config-files instead of installed.  What I'm
sure is that this causes issues when scripts expect /usr/bin/gconftool
to be there, and it's not.

(sorry about the stupid footer, it's the law)

-- 
Cheers,
Marga

Google Germany GmbH
Dienerstr. 12
80331 München

Registergericht und -nummer: Hamburg, HRB 86891
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Hamburg
Geschäftsführer: Graham Law, Christine Elizabeth Flores