[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#983251: passwd is missing dependencies

[Tim Woodall]

On Sun, 21 Feb 2021, Chris Hofstaedtler wrote:

> * Tim Woodall <debianbugs at woodall.me.uk> [210221 15:28]:
>> I am unsure how debootstrap avoids the first problem - It could just be
>> down to luck that debootstrap configures base-passwd before passwd. grep
>> is Priority: required and Essential: yes so it could be argued that it
>> should be unpacked before attempting to configure passwd and so this
>> dependency is not required.
>
> That is exactly the case. Both grep and base-passwd are Essential:
> yes, so they _must_ function already (even when not configured yet).
>
> Adding them to Depends: could be argued to be a bug.
>

Hi Chris,

As per my other message I think there is a bug, but it's not in this
package. However if there is a bug it's possibly in the wording of the
debian policy on essential packages which is somewhat vague about
bootstraping a virgin system.

I've now inspected debootstrap and it handles this case by having an
explicit ordering on how it configures the first seven packages
independent of any explicit or implicit dependencies.

So go ahead and close this bug rather than reassign it to base-passwd.
I've taken the discussion to debian-devel.

Regards,

Tim.