Bug#1141909: tech-ctte: dh_installtmpfiles-generated dependencies

On Mon, 13 Jul 2026 at 00:17:51 +0200, Chris Hofstaedtler wrote:
>Yes. a minbase install currently only has passwd's tmpfiles.d
>snippet. Note that it currently(?) is used only to clean up files on
>boot, and thus not essential to the operation of passwd after
>initial installation.

At the moment dh_installtmpfiles doesn't/can't distinguish between the 
common case of tmpfiles.d snippets that (might) create things (cases 1 
and 2 in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1141909#12, 
for example lines starting f, w, d, L) and the less common case of 
snippets that only configure cleanup (cases 3 and 4 in the same message, 
for example e, r, R). Instead it assumes that any tmpfiles.d snippet 
might do both.

Cases 1 and 2 can be functionally necessary, so in general will need a 
dependency, but cases 3 and 4 are merely a nice-to-have cleanup, so I 
don't think they would merit a dependency (if systemd-tmpfiles was 
gracefully skipped if not present).

     smcv