[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#1099086: might be less verbose in calling adduser

[Marc Haber]

Hi Simon,

On Sun, Mar 09, 2025 at 03:34:34PM +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
>On Sun, 09 Mar 2025 at 15:20:35 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
>>I haven't really thought about those upgrading things, but I took 
>>from this discussion that preinst and postinst scripts are likely to 
>>run with pre-upgrader versions of adduser. That's a real pity since 
>>it will slow down Debian's speed to simplify maintainer scripts but 
>>that's just the way things are.
>
>It is not that postinst scripts are *likely* to run with the old 
>version of adduser, so much as that postinst scripts are required to 
>assume that they *might* run with the old version of adduser, unless 
>the package explicitly has a versioned Depends on the new version of 
>adduser. I think a versioned Depends would be fine for packages higher 
>up the dependency stack (for instance in something like 
>gnome-remote-desktop or openarena-server I wouldn't hesitate to add 
>one), but every time we tighten a dependency lower down the stack, we 
>give apt tighter constraints to work with, which increases the 
>probability that apt will be unable to find a solution (either because 
>no solution exists, or because its heuristics can't find a solution in 
>a reasonable timeframe).

That is fully reasonably argumentation.

>Similary preinst scripts must assume that they might run with the old 
>version of adduser, unless the package has a *Pre-Depends* on the new 
>adduser - and Pre-Depends are definitely not something to deploy 
>lightly, because they put very significant constraints on what 
>solutions apt is allowed to propose.

Of course. Luckily, there is less than a handful of packages that use 
adduser in their preinst.

>If we have to defer some maintainer script simplifications until 
>forky, that's certainly not the worst thing: better that than not 
>being able to apply those simplifications at all! I'm grateful that 
>you have been teaching adduser to do the right thing by default, like 
>making --system imply --home=/nonexistent, making it never "helpfully" 
>create /nonexistent as a home directory, and making --system imply 
>enough of --quiet that maintainer scripts probably no longer need 
>--quiet in future. Those are all good directions.

Thank you. We're working on that ;-)

Greetings
Marc

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