Re: Mirrors et al.

[LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk]

Steffen Mueller <steffen@xlink.net> wrote:
> That's true while I think IMHO the dpkg tool could be anhanced the way 
> it refuses to update a package when a required one is missing.

No, I think dpkg is fine the way it is; I would like to see dselect
enhanced.  Dpkg needs to be able to do something that appears wrong
when the system administrator wants to and knows what he's doing.
I think dselect is the program which should be doing most of the
sanity checking.

> dpkg should check the depandancies an required fields as it does already 
> but additionally should offer a selection for the packages required to 
> set up the updated package correctly. It should automatically go thru 
> this cycle until all required packages are updated and installed in the 
> correct order.

Reading dselect for dpkg, I think that it should automatically, that is,
without prompt or warning, select the additional packages required for
any selected package or packages.  The user should be warned and
required to intervene only if there are incompatible options, or if
there is no way of fulfilling the requirements.  It is a pain when
dselect goes into warning mode dozens of times in a single session.

One irritating feature of dselect as it is at the moment is this:
if I start dselect and add only one or two packages, it prints the
entire list of packages on my screen, one by one, along with the
'skipping deselected package foo', or 'package bar is already installed'
messages.  I would like to see these messages omitted, at least by
default.

Is there a log of dselect/dpkg errors?  When I run a big install job,
I see things like this:

     xntp-doc not configured because it requires web browser

go past on the screen.  I wish they were saved in a file somewhere
so that I need not (try to) write them down as they pass.

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk