Thoughts regarding package installation
Constantly installing /upgrading/developing packages gives some things
that are not optimal with the packaging system.
1. The updating of configuration files should be handled more
intelligently.
A. If the currently installed version is the default from a prior
installation simply overwrite it. Currently sometimes this seems to
work sometimes not.
B. If the files are different then there should be a diff generated
to the old configuration file. If that diff has a reasonable size
and it applies cleanly to the new config file
then it should be presented as an option to automatically update
the new configfile with the diff or done by default.
In addition to the .dpkg-new a dpkg-new.diff should be generated.
C. The packaging system should remember the last choice the user made
when faced with upgrading that configfile and should default to that
choice. Provide an option to automatically perform the same action
without user interaction.
2. There are too many questions when upgrading packages.
Questions should be minimal and defaults should be put in whenever
possible. And upgrade should not lead to the running of a questionaire
how the package should be configured. That should only be done when the
user runs <application>config.
Perhaps there could be a kind of SILENCE option that forces dpkg to
just do the upgrade with no user intervention.
3. dselect is not able to handle the number of packets that we have
anymore. Long lists of stuff have to be handled in a huge list. You
never know exactly where you are and whats going on. That
list should be hierachical and seach operations should be possible.
4. On installing Debian dselect should NOT be called unless an expert mode
is selected. The user should be presented a couple of standard sets of
packages to be installed and pick one of those. That will probably
remove a big barrier for newbies to use debian. That was the barrier
for me and still is the barrier for many on Campus.
5. If a package is to be purged then the system should not accept any
failure of any script to give up. If all scripts fail then all the
files of which the system know which belong to that packet should be
erased.
6. It should be possible to do "dpkg -i apache" for example and dpkg
will look along a defined search path for that package and install/
upgrade it. I am constantly looking for packets in the rex tree.
dpkg could make the choice to search the path from the fact that
there is no .deb at the end of the packagename.
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