Bug#289245: java-package: alternatives not removed when sun-j2sdk* is removed

[Steven Ihde]

Package: java-package
Version: 0.18
Severity: normal

When removing a java package built by make-jpkg (e.g., "apt-get remove
sun-j2sdk1.4"), the alternatives installed by the package are not
removed.  Here's what is supposed to happen:

/var/lib/dpkg/info/sun-j2sdk1.4debian.prerm calls
/usr/share/j2sdk1.4-sun/debian/remove, which calls 
update-alternatives to actually remove the alternatives.

However, the first thing /usr/share/j2sdk1.4-sun/debian/remove does is
check for existence of /usr/lib/j2sdk1.4-sun/debian/info.  This file
is part of sun-j2sdk1.4, not sun-j2sdk1.4debian, and has already been
removed at this point.  Thus, no alternatives are ever removed.

While investigating this I noted that sun-j2sdk1.4 and
sun-j2sdk1.4debian each depend on the other.  This seems unnecessarily
complicated, and in a way is the cause of the problem: I don't know
how apt-get decides in what order to run the postinst and prerm
scripts given the circular dependency.  Apparently (in my case at
least) it picks correctly on the install (sun-j2sdk1.4 is installed
before sun-j2sdk1.4debian, so the install script finds
/usr/lib/j2sdk1.4-sun/debian/info and creates the alternatives), but
picks incorrectly when removing (sun-j2sdk1.4 is removed before
sun-j2sdk1.4debian, so the alternatives are not removed).

I suppose a workaround is to use dpkg to remove these packages
(removing the debian package before the main package), but it would be
nice if this worked with apt-get.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (900, 'unstable'), (890, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-hamachi
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages java-package depends on:
ii  debhelper                     4.2.28     helper programs for debian/rules

-- no debconf information