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Re: [RFC] DEP-6: Meta-Package debian/control field



Hello,

David Paleino wrote:
> Implementation
[...]
> ### Package managers ###
[...]
> If any dependant package is a meta-package, as defined by this
> document, it should **NOT** be removed, opposed to what the current
> implementations do. The package manager should then add the removed
> package to a "blacklist" for the dependant meta-package. This allows
> for upgrades of the meta-package without re-installing everything again,
> i.e. the package manager should check the dependencies of the
> meta-package against its blacklist, if present.
No, it doesn't. Dpkg and any sane high-level package manager won't consider
installing/upgrading/keeping some package (meta or not) without all Depends
installed.

What you described above seems more like 'Recommends'-handling to me, and some
high-level package managers (I can say for cupt) have some logic to not
install the same recommended packages again if they were not installed or
removed when upgrading "parent" packages.

> #### Blacklist management ####
> Package managers should allow for deletion of the blacklist upon
> removal of the meta-package.
> 
> Moreover, they should allow the deletion of the blacklist, and the
> installation of the missing meta-package dependencies at the same time.
The "blacklist" support also is already present somewhere (speaking of cupt,
you can set pin like "-2000" to some package, and it won't be pulled for
Recommends/Suggests).


To summarize: if I am not mistaken, this DEP cannot be implemented due to
technical reasons in its current form.

-- 
Eugene V. Lyubimkin aka JackYF, JID: jackyf.devel(maildog)gmail.com
C++/Perl developer, Debian Developer

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