Bug#956330: apt: Provide option to prompt on apt install foo whether foo should be marked manually installed
On Thu, Apr 09, 2020 at 08:23:41PM -0400, annadane wrote:
> Package: apt
> Version: 1.8.2
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Dear Maintainer,
Please note that I edited the email to split it into paragraphs and wrap them (insert
newlines) below 80 characters, so that it becomes readable and possible to respond to,
rather than one line of characters running off the screen.
>
> I'm just wondering whether for Deb 11 we might provide an option for users to perhaps, be
> prompted when they apt install foo and foo is already installed, to *ask* whether they
> intend to mark it manually installed.
For the situations where we print that message, only in apt(8)? I think that sounds
reasonable. Even more limited, I guess it makes sense to prompt only if there were no
other changes, that is, if all it does is mark stuff as installed.
> I find most of the time when I do that, as opposed to apt-mark manual foo, it's because
> I've made a mistake and forgotten or not noticed I already had something installed, not
> because I want to set it to manual. apt-mark manual foo might work the same as it always
> does but as said it would be nice to prompt the user when they apt install a package like
> this
Similar here. Often I need to tweak resolver choices, so I append more package names
to the install command to get the solution I want, and then it marks them as manually
installed which annoys the heck out of me.
Because "install foo..." essentially means "Ensure foo... are manually installed",
not "manually install them if they are not yet installed". As in, if you manually
told it to install a package name, you must care about it, so it should be marked
as such.. But ever since we could specify installed package names as hints,
this has been somewhat suboptimal.
Personally, I think it would make more sense to stop marking stuff as manually
installed, but I know others disagree, and certainly it can't be changed for
apt-get, so it'd one more diverging behavior.
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