Re: [RFC] DEP-6: Meta-Package debian/control field
On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 07:52 -0800, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 09:40:37AM +0100, David Paleino wrote:
> > So you're suggesting me to also do a "wicd" task.
> > In experimental I have "wicd" depending on wicd-daemon + wicd-curses|wicd-
> > gtk -- (it's a simple case, where the user might manually choose the
> > components, but it's good for the sake of exampling).
> > A user having "wicd" installed now, and upgrading to experimental, might
> > want to remove one of the components:
>
> > # apt-get --purge remove wicd-curses
>
> > This will also uninstall "wicd", and mark wicd-daemon and wicd-gtk for
> > autoremoval.
>
> > I don't think we should escalate metapackages to tasks, sorry.
>
> Special autoremoval handling of metapackages addresses this, without
> meddling with the existing package relationship fields. This could be done
> with special handling of 'Section: metapackages', or by adding a new
> 'Metapackage: yes' field (as I think some would prefer based on comments on
> IRC).
>
> Package: wicd
> Section: metapackage
> Depends: wicd-curses|wicd-gtk, wicd-daemon
>
> # apt-get purge wicd-curses
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
> wicd-curses* wicd*
> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
> After this operation, 57.3kB disk space will be freed.
> Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
>
> Those are exactly the correct semantics. It makes no sense to remove the
> depends of a metapackage *and leave the metapackage installed* - what
> purpose would that serve?
In this particular case, none. But in the general case there are reasons
to keep the metapackage installed. For example, I want to try out gnome.
So I install the gnome metapackage. I do not want (say) brasero. But I
still want everything removable by just saying aptitude remove gnome.
--
Saludos,
Felipe Sateler
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