[debian-mysql] Bug#621020: really? (Debian Policy and LSB)

[Raphael Hertzog]

Hi,

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012, Nicholas Bamber wrote:
> Hmm... This contradicts section 6.1 of the Debian policy.
> 
> "The package management system looks at the exit status from these
> scripts. It is important that they exit with a non-zero status if

Here "these scripts" refer to "package maintainer scripts"
({pre,post}{inst,rm}) and not to "init scripts". So there's no
contradiction.

The problem of using "set -e" in init script is even documented
in policy 9.3.2:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html#s-writing-init

| Be careful of using set -e in init.d scripts. Writing correct init.d
| scripts requires accepting various error exit statuses when daemons are
| already running or already stopped without aborting the init.d script, and
| common init.d function libraries are not safe to call with set -e in
| effect[72]. For init.d scripts, it's often easier to not use set -e and
| instead check the result of each command separately. 
|
| [72] /lib/lsb/init-functions, which assists in writing LSB-compliant
| init scripts, may fail if set -e is in effect and echoing status messages
| to the console fails, for example. 

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Pre-order a copy of the Debian Administrator's Handbook and help
liberate it: http://debian-handbook.info/liberation/