Starting unstable aptitude releases and RFC

[Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@brown.edu>]

  Hi folks.  I guess this is the first official announcement of any sort for
aptitude, since previous versions just happened, so for people who missed it:
aptitude is a Curses-based and decidedly non-minimal apt frontend.  This
message is about aptitude 0.1.0, a development release which will be a major
change from previous once it actually works. (yes, I'll probably go through
a whole bunch of 0.1.x releases and then do 0.2.0.  Unless I decide to just
stay with 0.1.x.  I'm flexible :) )

  I've finally hacked the "ui-rewrite" branch of the aptitude CVS repository
into a state where I feel it's ready to be released to curious users.  It's
not yet ready to replace the old source tree, as some important functionality
(*cough* downloading packages *cough*) isn't yet hooked into the new interface,
and there are a lot of small holes and missing things that need to be fixed.

  But it makes a decent package browser, and people who want to see what I've
been mumbling about in response to various user comments, bugreports, and
random email messages might want to take a look :)  It works mostly like
the old version (with changes which are, alas, not yet documented), although
the undo behavior is a bit different and configurability isn't quite there
yet.  (although once it is, it'll totally blow away 0.0.x)

  I haven't yet made the actual release files -- I'll post back here when I
get that straightened out.  I'm working on allowing the old version and
the new version to co-exist peacefully (separate configs, separate
binaries, etc) since you can't really replace the old with the new yet.

  One question that I'd like people to comment on: I'd like to release a
precompiled binary package for this version, but I don't think releasing it as
"aptitude" is a good idea :)
  Would it work if I ITPed "aptitude1" and uploaded that package [1]?  The only
thing that really worries me is that I'll eventually want to remove this
package and release it as "aptitude" (once the new version is working well),
and people who only install aptitude1 will be cut out of upgrades once that
package is removed and not know what's going on.  That sounds like a nasty
situation to me, unless I make aptitude1 artifically depend on aptitude (EVIL!)

   Thanks,
  Daniel

  [1] or made it available on a personal web page/from sourceforge, whatever..
same issues either way.

-- 
/----------------- Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@brown.edu> -----------------\
|              "It is said that someone at a party once asked                 |
|               the famous philosopher Ly Tin Weedle, 'why                    |
|               are you here?', and the reply took three years."              |
|                -- Terry Pratchett                                           |
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