Re: Why 2 inconsistent package managers frontents?

[Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>]

Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> Maybe I should lobby wichert to create a lib/methods/available interface,
> and make dpkg --*avail exec it and also make dselect popen it. This
> program would have a argument to get the whole available file and an
> argument to return records with a search string, maybe some other things
> too.
> 
> Old dpkg methods would just use a default program that used
> /var/lib/dpkg/available and APT would provide one that dynamically built
> information from the version pin table and /var/state/apt/lists.
> 
> By putting it in the dselect methods dir it neatly fits into the dpkg
> paradigm and is not APT specific.
>  
> That would make everyone quite happy, yes? 

I suppose so.

> Where is the documentation that says anything but dselect methods update
> the available file?

Ahem, dpkg(1):
       dpkg --update-avail | --merge-avail Packages-file
              Update  dpkg's and dselect's idea of which packages
	      are  available.

> Remember, way long ago apt-get had to co-exist with a
> non-apt dselect method so doing this update automatically would have been
> quite bad.

I don't really understand why. Isn't the dpkg ststus area locked when
the available file is being merged?

-- 
see shy jo