Proposal: 'Expires' entry in Debian package header
Hi folks,
There are a lot of duplicate packages on my system, for example
tcl 8.0, tcl 8.2, tcl 8.3, libstdc++ 2.8, libstdc++ 2.9 and 2.10,
etc. Probably you have the same. Is it allowed to make a suggestion
to get rid of these old packages and to get a more homogeneous
environment?
Each Debian package should include an Expires entry containing the
date when it will expire. The default should be 0xFFFFFFFF, i.e.
it never expires.
If a package has been replaced by a newer version and if the old
version should no longer be used, then the Expires entry of the old
package could be set to a date in the near future (now + 3 months,
for example).
A small program could check the dependencies for each package. If
one of the required packages expires in the near future, then it
could send an EMail to the maintainer of the checked package, ring
some kind of alarm bell, etc. I guess you get the point: There
would be a little bit more pressure on each maintainer to keep his
packages up to date.
A new function for dpkg could be introduced to check for expired
packages. Dselect could print out a warning when an expired package
has been selected for installation.
Expired packages could be removed from the distribution tree after
(lets say) 3 more months.
Just an idea. Regards
Harri
--
Harald Dunkel | harri@Synopsys.COM | If your operating system seems to
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