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Fwd: New approach to obsolete packages

hi

Mitch Blevins and I have had a nice discussion;
I have thought of a way to improve the Auto flag in apt;
please read the discussion, and comment at will


thanks and bye a.




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--- Begin Message --- 
-- 
Andrea C. Mennucci,   Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy
--- Begin Message --- 
hi

Mitch Blevins wrote:
> 
> In foo.debian-devel, you wrote:
> > We've had a number of cases now where it would be convenient to have a
> > package that removes itself after successful installation. ...
> > Self-Destruct: Yes
> >
> > This tells dpkg to automatically remove the package if nothing else
> > depends on it.
> > ...
> 
> Isn't this the same functionality provided by the propposed 'Auto'
> flag in Deity? 

no it is completely different: consider the example:
1) the package   xbase   is obsolete : it does not really exist any
more, 
  debian  needs it there so that people will install, thru its
dependencies,
  all new x* packages
2) if I install moonlight that needs   mesa2g  , then I will also
install
 mesa2g to use it, but I would love that if I later remove  moonlight,
 mesa2g would be removed, too

if you where using APT, the package  xbase would most probably have
been installed BY DIRECT CHOICE of the user, and then it wouldnt not
have the "auto" flag setted: APT would NEVER delete it using the "Auto" 
flag

for the first case , you need an "Obsolete" flag
for the second, you need a "Auto" flag


> From Section 5.2 of
> http://www.debian.org/~wakkerma/apt-design2.1.txt
> 
> 5.2 Automatically installed packages ......


Hey I love this ! I wanted to propose it to the debian community myself!

I would also add another use of this flag!
We could permit people to grade packages by their usage:
when the user selects a package, it coul optionally say ``why''

So my idea is to replace the "Auto" flag by a field called
"Reason-of-installation" which has  two usages:
basic usage: it can have two values 
 "to-satisfy-dependeces" and "for-user-choice",
  which APT will set 
advanced usage: it can have other values, at user discretion: eg 
 "for-testin" "for-entertainment"  "for-work" ecc

Why ? well it happens that I install packages "only-for-testing";
then , I run out of disk space, and I have to reread all the list
of 1000s of installed packages to see which one I better delete;
with the above flag, I could ask it to APT
 
> The advantage of your proposed Self-Destruct field over the Auto flag is:
> It takes the decision out of the hands of the end-user.
> The disadvantage of the Self-Destruct field is:
> It takes the decision out of the hands of the end-user.

well, IMHO the decision of removing an obsolete package should be
proposed anyway to the  ordinary end user, somehow

> Are there any other pros/cons of the two approaches?
> 

dunno

-- 
Andrea C. Mennucci,   Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy

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