[plug] Debian dpkg status question

[Denis Brown]

Hello,

While attempting to install PostgreSQL with perl awareness on a
Debian woody box the "make" step failed because the libperl.so could not
be found.  Perl 5.6.1 is installed and apparently functional; dpkg was
happy about it and apt-get update/upgrade steps also seemed to agree that
it was the latest version, correctly installed.  An unfortunate Blue
Screen of Mind (tm) had dpkg presented with a purge command for perl.

No damage was done because of the dependencies which did not allow Perl to
be blown away.  Probably would not have mattered if it had, a simple
apt-get maneouver would have seen it back in its rightful place.   Anyway
getting a status listing now for perl shows that it is marked for Purge,
current status is OK and that it is installed.

What I want to do is "cancel" the unwanted purge operation insofar as the
status file is concerned so that nothing untoward happens down the
track.  So to the question... is it sufficient to edit the
/var/lib/dpkg/status file to change the word "purge" to
"installed" against the perl entry?  If no, then how can I get Debian to
realise that I really do not want perl nuked in the future?

By the way the solution for the apparently absent perl was to put a
symlink for libperl.so pointing to the version 5.6.1 libperl.so file.

Cheers and thanks in advance,
Denis