Re: New approach to obsolete packages

[jdg@maths.qmw.ac.uk (Julian Gilbey)]

> We've had a number of cases now where it would be convenient to have a
> package that removes itself after successful installation.  In some
> cases we actually built one (xbase, miscutils), with others we found
> another solution (modutils), and with some we don't have a solution
> yet (xfnt*).
> 
> I think a general solution might be to add a single new dpkg flag:
> 
> Self-Destruct: Yes

While we're on this subject, I noticed that my /var/lib/dpkg/status
file lists every package that has ever been in my available list.
IMHO, having libc4 listed as not-installed on a slink system is a bit
daft, and makes any search involving the status file take longer.  Can
we easily modify dselect to rewrite the status file instead of just
modifying it, including only those packages which are either in
available or at least partially installed?

   Julian

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  Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
             Debian GNU/Linux Developer.  jdg@debian.org
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