Re: Bug#181170: dpkg: -l cannot get status to match desire if purged
Guillem Jover wrote:
> Dan Jacobson wrote:
>> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
>> |Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
>> |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err:uppercase=bad)
>> ||/ Name Version Description
>> +++-==================-==================-====================================================
>> pn dpkg-www <none> (no description available)
I take it that the cause of the misunderstanding here is that it
says "Purge" is still merely "Desired" (and so by implication not
yet accomplished).
>> well, true, it is a cosmetic problem, but as you see, there is no way
>> to make the desired state letter match the status letter, as all there
>> is is "Not/Installed" and no matching category. therefore we never
>> reach our desires, one could say. so maybe rename something.
>
> I'm not going to change the ‘desired’ or ‘status’ letters, as that would
> break external packages and scripts realying on them bein what they
> currently are.
>
> You have to consider though, that they are not meant to match, as one
> is an action to perform and the other a state. But I could certainly
> change the first to something like “Desired Action”.
I don't see how that helps. Quite the opposite: the problem is that
they are desired _states_ (which is why the desire persists when the
action is finished). When jidanni asks about a purged package and
it answers that Desired=p, it isn't wrongly saying that it hopes to
someday perform the action of purging, it's correctly reporting that
its intended state is the purged state.
Why not expand u/i/r/p/h as Unknown/Installed/Removed/Purged/Held?
(Alternatively, yes, you could change the name of the category; even
a close synonym like "Intended" would make jidanni's problem go away.
But I gather that would be more effort, and almost any effort would
be too much.)
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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