Re: MarkInstall, Auto-Installed, and programs that misuse FromUser
On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 6:22 AM, Daniel Hartwig <mandyke@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8 November 2012 07:39, David Kalnischkies
> <kalnischkies+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
> I do not 100% like the idea of pushing (3) entirely to the frontends;
> it is fairly sensible, if only it didn't cause problems some times.
> Anyway, any change to the semantics of MarkInstall is post-Wheezy
> material, so maybe a better solution will come up in the meantime.
That is the question: Is it really post-wheezy material?
As you said in the first quote, (3) might make sense, but isn't what
most libapt-users expect. Most of them seem to be in depth-freeze stasis
given the seldom use of the FromUser bit causing it to be always set as it
is the default.
I wonder if the (3)-sometimes was hidden well enough so that libapt-users
actually expected a (3)-never and got that most of the time.
Maybe it is better to revert the default behavior to (3)-sometimes as
discovering all the hidden "broken" usages and fixing those in freeze might
not be the best move. It wasn't done before freeze so I doubt it will be now.
With a config option we could make MarkInstall behave in regards to
(3) in the states -never, -sometimes, -always with defaulting to -sometimes
for wheezy and worry about what to do with the default after wheezy.
apt-get and aptitude as "good" citizens can then choose whichever mode they
like. Clean might be something else, but overriding user settings is not nice;
but it is what libapt currently does even if it is not entirely its fault.
So strictly speaking this is a release-critical bug at it looks like it is
easier to "fix" in libapt than in potential a good portion of all libapt-users.
Best regards
David Kalnischkies
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