On Tue, 2002-09-17 at 21:43, Drew Scott Daniels wrote: [pkgs removal] > The only problem I have is that sometimes the maintainer or QA's decision > might not be the best solution for users. As you say package removal can > be based on a maintainer who has said we don't need the package anymore. There's nothing forcing users to remove their installed package only because it's not available anymore. If they see their pkg as 'local or obsolete' in dselect (dunno how other frontends display these) they should obviously have a place to look why the pkg is not there anymore (I think everybody agrees with that) and not be forced to ask on a mailing list. So, existing users of a pkg can live with pkgs being not available via apt anymore. There are basically three categories of 'new' users of a pkg, that may want to install a removed pkg: - Users who just want a program to do task X: Better they don't see the removed pkgs at all, if there are better alternatives - Users who want the removed program and didn't know it was once pkgd: It's not ideal if they can't see the pkg - on the other hand, they will (i) use an alternative - which will probably be better (ii) install locally and be prepared to deal with the problems (iii) find out (mailing list or the 'removed pkgs list') why it's not in Debian anymore, and then do (i) or (ii). I think these users will be able to cope without a big problems. - Debian users who have this pkg installed on one machine and now also want it on another machine: I think some these will be angry. But I also think that this will be a really rare case. All this assuming that pkgs getting moved to a not apt-gettable location (or removed alltogether) does happen only for the real long-unmaintained, buggy packages. Just my CHF.02 - ianadd and all this. cheers -- vbi -- secure email with gpg http://fortytwo.ch/gpg NOTICE: subkey signature! request key 92082481 from keyserver.kjsl.com
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