Re: Metapackages (was Re: Debian Weekly News - September 14th, 1999)

[Laurent Martelli <martelli@iie.cnam.fr>]

>>>>> "SB" == Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@pasteur.fr> writes:

  SB> On Thursday 16 September 1999, at 2 h 3, the keyboard of Laurent
  SB> Martelli <martelli@iie.cnam.fr> wrote:

  >> very nice, but how will uninstallation be handled ? Will you be
  >> able to uninstall all the packages of a metapackage in one step ?

  SB> Certainly not:

  SB> - a package can be a member of several meta-packages, 

We could state that the default is not to remove a package as long as
it belongs to a metapackage. 

  SB> - a package could have been installed before (and independently
  SB> of) a metapackage which includes it).

That could be tracked during the installation of the metapackage. It
would know what packages were already installed before. Then when you
want to remove the metapackage, you could say "only remove packages
that were installed by the metapackage" or "remove all packages,
regardless of when they were installed".

-- 
Laurent Martelli
martelli@iie.cnam.fr