[Popcon-developers] Bug#414865: popularity-contest: A script to filter requested/recommended/suggested packages

[carsten@debian.org (Carsten Hey)]

Christian, there is currently no need to answer my question regarding
forking and l10n.  I'll ping you again if there is really need for this
information.

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 11:37:48PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 09:50:51PM +0200, Carsten Hey wrote:
> > On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 09:39:34PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > > On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 08:22:50PM +0200, Carsten Hey wrote:
> > > > Christian, orphaner has been forked, see #414865.  I CC'd you because I'm
> > > > interested in your views regarding forks and l10n issues, since you are very
> > > > experienced in the latter.
> > >
> > > I think you mean another bug: 414865 is assigned to popularity-contest.
> >
> > No, #414865 is assigned to popularity-contest and the proposed "fix" is
> > a fork of orphaner.
>
> Interesting... Wondering how you get there...

Christophe CC'd me.

> Forking orphaner seems quite an overkill.

Yes, it is, and it is probably wrong.  There are also some conceptional
issues with the current implementation which are not easily fixable in
a sane way without adapting deborphan itself.  I got a better idea,
I need to add two new options to deborphan, one to ignore libraries
(this needs to be implemented anyway before tags replace sections) and
one to include a list of packages as potential orphans.

deborphan --include $(popcon-largest-unused | awk '{print $2}') \
    --no-libs "$@"

... would then do what is needed by deborphan itself to show orphaned
unused packages, this could be combined with --ignore-recommends,
--ignore-suggests or --nice, which is an alias for both.  Since options
that are passed after conflicting options override these in deborphan,
--libs could be used additional by users who want to see both, orphaned
libraries and orphaned unused packages.

For the orphaner part, there is already an option (in SVN, will be
included in 1.7.29) to show the size of a package.  It is currently not
possible to sort by the installed size, but I don't think this is really
that useful since there will not be that many packages which are really
unused and orphaned.  I will think about --programname to allow a to be
written wrapper to set the to be displayed name.  This wrapper would ask
whether /var/log/popularity-contest should be updated and then run
orphaner:

    if ... dialog ...; then
        popularity-contest > /var/log/...
    fi
    orphaner --include $(popcon-largest-unused | awk '{print $2}') \
        --no-libs --show-size "$@"

If I'll implement this option, --programname $name_of_the_wrapper would
additionally be added.  orphaner and deborphan both already check
command options, so there is no need to let this wrapper also do this.
Just passing "$@" to orphaner would be sufficient to support every
option orphaner supports.

This wrapper should also be usable as wrapper around deborphan itself,
since there are options which are difficult and others which are
impossible to add to orphaner, maybe this could be handled using
symlinks, see editkeep and orphaner as examples.  The mentioned options
which are problematic for a dialog based frontend are especially
circular dependency support and the to be written correct handling of
alternatives and provides.

Christophe, would you be interested in writing such a wrapper?  You
could probably reuse the dialog regarding updating the popcon database
and besides this part there is not that much work left.  A man page
would also be required.  Referring to deborphan's man page for most
options would save a lot of work.  Using pod's syntax instead of groff's
might be easier.

I already planned the to be implemented features and bugfixes for the
next two releases and this bug is less important for me and for most
users than these planned features, so don't expect the new deborphan
options too soon.

> > > I think you are mixing two unrelated bugs.
> >
> > No.  In the meantime I do know how you are related to
> > popularity-contest. :)
>
> Yes I am the maintainer, with Petter.

bugs.d.o really should show uploaders.


Regards
Carsten