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Re: show all Suggests packages not installed



On Tue, May 13, 2003 at 09:21:33AM -0700, Keegan Quinn wrote:
> On Monday 12 May 2003 04:40 pm, Brian May wrote:
> > Also, just blindly purging packages can be dangerous, in some cases old
> > packages will purge files used by newer packages that are still used by
> > the system.
> 
> I'm pretty sure that would be a bug.  You should report this behavior if you 
> see it.  Although I won't deny this happens, purging completely unused 
> packages is generally a good idea, unless you want your system building up a 
> nice history of everything it has ever been used for.

However, there is no good solution.

eg. assume package a and a-beta conflict.

Package a postinst creates a /etc/a.conf file. ie. a configuration file,
not a conffile.

Naturally the purge has to remove it.

However, the system adminstrator installs package
a-beta instead.

This removes package a (because of the conflict) but doesn't run the
purge script.

Years latter, adminstrator say "I can purge
package a".

He does so.

Package a-beta stops working.

Reason: when purging package a, the postinst script has no way of
knowing that /etc/a.conf is still being used by package a-beta, and
erases it.

The only solution I think is if dpkg were to take over responsibility
for deleting configuration files, so that the postrm script doesn't have
to worry.

(I am assuming no package called a actually exists...)
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>



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