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Date:      Sun, 10 Sep 2000 11:39:32 -0700 (PDT)
From:      kosmos <kosmos@bowhill.yi.org>
To:        Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org>
Cc:        Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami <asami@FreeBSD.ORG>, Steve Price <sprice@hiwaay.net>, Will Andrews <will@physics.purdue.edu>, FreeBSD Ports <ports@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: PortsNG (was Re: Ports Options Paper)
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0009101049490.95810-100000@bowhill.yi.org>
In-Reply-To: <20000910194324.A80015@mithrandr.moria.org>

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On Sun, 10 Sep 2000, Neil Blakey-Milner wrote:

> On Sun 2000-09-10 (10:02), kosmos wrote:
> > > On Sun 2000-09-10 (01:30), Satoshi - Ports Wraith - Asami wrote:
> > > > But I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do for ordinary users.
> > > > (I added it just for quick testing -- it's not even documented.)  The
> > > > problem here is that we don't know whether the user wants BAR_1 to be
> > > > deleted or not.  Maybe the user is using something in BAR_1 and didn't
> > > > realize typing "make deinstall-depends" from FOO would delete it.
> > > 
> > > When installing a port/package directly, touch
> > > /var/db/pkg/foo-1.0/direct, if not, don't touch it.  Well, a better name
> > > would be cool, but that should work fine.
> > 
> > 
> > Something like that would make sense if the user ordered the package to be
> > installed explicitly. But the problem is not to delete anything that the 
> > user *might* be using. There is really no way to do this automatically.
> > 
> > Suppose BAR_1 is a dependency of FOO, and the user decides he
> > wants to keep it. Later, he decides that FOO is just taking up drive 
> > space, so he runs deinstall-depends - and BAR_1 gets deleted too.
> > 
> > Also, isn't this function indirectly handled by +REQUIRED_BY?
> 
> Not quite.
> 
> You cut off my other paragraph, which maybe didn't make sense.  The user
> can change the 'direct' or "keep me even if everything that depends on
> me disappears" flag to on or off either manually, or through some
> CUI/GUI tool (still to be written).

Sorry, I guess I didn't see what you were getting at. Actually, this
sounds like pretty useful feature, as +REQUIRED_BY doesn't list a 
package that depends on itself.

In any case, this still doesn't provide enough protecion against 
accidental erasure.

The specific case: deleting a dependent package that the user may want 
to keep, yet never explicity installed it or flagged it.

It's a fact that people will use some programs that are installed 
for them by automata. How would you make the system aware of which
programs these are, before deleting them?

There would probably need to be some mechanism to get the user's
permission first.

--Allan



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