Status update. Scott has perhaps been skeptical---properly so---of my commitment to dselect development. He does not know me, after all, and I have contributed no patches as yet. However, matters proceed according to plan. At present, I am very slowly reading my way through the latest experimental dpkg sources (1.13.2 as of today). This is a learning experience for me. In November Scott said something about standing on one's head to understand iwj-C++, but to me the dselect source really doesn't look too bad; by the end of the calendar year I should be fairly familiar with it. I remain unfamiliar with autotools, but apparently this is not much of a handicap in treating the dselect bugs. I can learn autotools over time. A greater problem for me is that I have no experience in managing long, long lists of old BTS reports. It is hard to know where to start. At the present moment, it is not clear to me that anything at all should be done about many of the dselect bug reports, but I am not nearly so confident yet as to propose closing a lot of open bugs. After reviewing the BTS logs, lacking other guidance, my current inclination is to start with the TODO item of adding support for Enhances. Perhaps supporting Enhances without slowing program execution involves constituting a look-up hash with the standard library's <search.h>. Apparently adding Enhances support begins in the dpkg source proper, so I have some work to do. Anyway, as my earlier messages in the #282283 BTS log indicate, please do not expect anything from me too soon. Some of you are highly skilled hackers, but I still have much to learn, and dpkg is sufficiently important a package that I do not feel comfortable contributing dpkg patches until I understand the overall source better. Gandalf observed that Barliman Butterbur could "see through a brick wall in time." So if you are Gandalf, permit me to play Butterbur's role today. I shall need some time to see through this wall. If anyone else here is already working on the dpkg/dselect Enhances problem, please advise. Otherwise, contact me any time, for any reason. -- Thaddeus H. "Butterbur" Black (staring hard at a brick wall) 508 Nellie's Cave Road Blacksburg, Virginia 24060, USA +1 540 961 0920, t@b-tk.org
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